In November 1990, I was a month away from my 19th birthday. I had graduated from high school five months earlier. I was working part time at the pizza joint. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to take ONE class at the local community college. I was spending all my free time partying with my friends and surfing in Santa Cruz. I was mostly staying up all night and sleeping past noon. I was restless and directionless.<\/p>\n
Also during this time, Saddam Hussein had invaded a little Persian Gulf country called Kuwait. The US was officially at war with Iraq. And my friends were joining the various branches of the military.<\/p>\n
My buddy Brian talked me into going down to the US Navy recruiting station. And the sailors down there told me all their best stories of travelling and seeing the world.<\/p>\n
I was sold. I signed up. I spent the entire day at the recruiting station. That night I came home to my unhappy parents.<\/p>\n
“Where have you been?” my father asked, angry that I’d been gone all day and didn’t tell anyone where I was.<\/p>\n
“Mom…Dad…I just joined the Navy…and there’s nothing you can do about it.”<\/p>\n
I went to my room with a smug smile on my face, thinking about all the freedom I’d have once I was out of my parent’s house. Later I found out that my parents spent the entire night, awake in bed, unable to sleep, worrying about their son about to go to war.<\/p>\n
I went to boot camp weeks later.<\/p>\n
Well, today is Veterans Day. And I am a veteran of the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991.<\/p>\n
So happy Veterans Day to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In November 1990, I was a month away from my 19th birthday. I had graduated from high school five months earlier. I was working part time at the pizza joint. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to take ONE class at the local community college. I was spending all my free time partying with my friends and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[432,434,433],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","tag-persian-gulf-war","tag-us-navy","tag-veterans-day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paF8Q-cm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":769,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teebiss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}