Hi Faith,
Well here is our story of how Tim told us he wanted to join the Army…
It
was the summer before our son’s senior year of high school. He was 17.
Tim had an older friend that had just joined the army and was headed off
to BCT that summer. Well Tim and Doug spent a lot of time together. As
boys are they don’t tell “mom” everything. We knew that Doug joined the
service and as parents of his friend we wanted to be supportive. Little
did I know that a few weeks later I would be getting the news that Tim
wanted to join.
Like
you we had always thought he would go off to college after graduating.
He was taking classes at the local college for criminal justice and had
even spent a lot of time with my cousins that are county sheriff
deputies. He had always said he was going to be a police officer just
like them when he grew up.
Well
about a week before Doug left for BCT Tim called me while I was at
work. I still remember the call..”Hey Mom, What would you say if I
joined the Army?” At first I thought he was kidding. I said “NO WAY”
“You didn’t even like going to camp!” I told him to stop picking on me
and we would talk about it when I got home. Well he was home waiting and
I asked him if he told his dad. Which he had not. For some reason both
Tim and his sister liked to “freak” me out before they told their dad
anything like that.
We
sat down and talked about it. With Tim being only 17 at the time we
would have to “sign” the documents for him to join. He also wanted to
sign right away so he could get the MOS that he wanted. Like you I
felt there was NO WAY I was going to give my child (my baby) over to the
Army. We told him he had to really think about it. We met with the
recruiter a few times to ask questions and more questions (to be honest I
think the recruiter thought I was a “bit” over protective). We asked
him why the Army and not any other branch of the service. His answer was
“the ARMY is the only one I want to join”. Well we told him that he had
to speak to the other branches of the service if he was serious and
then we would discuss it more. My brother in law was in the Navy so we
had him speak to him about joining and why one branch more than the
other. After the spoke Tim was still 100% certain he wanted to join the
Army. No the next thing he needed to do was tell us the MOS that he
picked. After scoring very well on his AVBS he had any MOS that he
wanted to pick from. We were thinking that he would go into MP or
anything with computers. But I wasn’t so “lucky”!! One night were
watching a movie that Tim picked out and wanted us to watch. He would
sometimes bring movies home and say “Watch this, It is really cool.” I
would find out 10 minutes into the movie that this was the MOS that Tim
had chosen. The movie was “The Hurt Locker” and the job was a EOD. This
is so NOT what I wanted to see him do.
After
a few more weeks of me “digging” my feet in and saying pick something
else, Tim said “Mom, I really want this. I want to do good out there and
help people”. He said he was going to be 18 and would just sign up
then if we didn’t sign the forms. So with mixed emotions, I finally said
I would sign the papers.
I
will tell you that there have been MANY times that I wished I didn’t
sign that document and other times that I am so DANG proud of the man he
has become.
(((hugs)))Stacy
No comments:
Post a Comment