Annook caught me behind the wheel of the Bluesmobile yesterday. I Heard the ring tone from the front pocket of my Levis, and I fished it out punched “accept” and held it up to my ear.
“So, you installed the ring enhancer on the phone.” It was a declarative sentence, not a question, but I answered anyway.
“Yeah, I got it hooked up. Seems to work.”
“Well,” she said. “It worked so well that Raven picked up and said ‘hello.’ Then I asked to speak to Big Mama and he just put the phone down, and not on the cradle. I can’t call back because it is off the hook.”
“So you would like us to ensure that the phone is hung up?”
“Precisely.” I told her I would, and thought about the nature of time, and the coming 25 hours, after which Raven will not be answering any further phones.
In Korea, we Me-guks kept calendars with the length of the one-year tour in neat blocks, twelve months lined up one day at a time so you could cross them off, one by one. It was sort of reverse Julian Date scheme, since we did not arrive at the neat start of a month, and all the days were interchangeable.
Various types of Short Timer calendars were used by the GIs to count their remaining days left in country. These usually consisted of a sectioned line-drawing with “color in” blocks, numbered with a count-down of remaining days (similar to “Paint by number”), and really began to kick in at the 30 to 90 day point. When a soldier had very few days left in-country, he was considered to be “short”.
Time has moved on. In the Sand Box, my pal Santa calculated by the number of steak and lobster nights in the Mess Hall, but with a distinct lack of centralized feeding in the ROK, it was easier to just concentrate on the number of times you had to rise and go work down in the Bunker.
It was shift work, so from wake-up to wake-up it was hard to tell what time it was.
My calendar was different than that of the GI, since I was in the Navy and we took an improvised approach to how long a one year tour might be. I would have run out of my little boxes and had to tack on another couple months, but eventually, issues for my relief were settled and orders transmitted and I could look at a calendar without cringing.
But the ones for the real solders were pretty cool, with the last few weeks having references to how “short” you were getting- dangling legs while sitting on a dime, this sort of thing:
“When I jump out of bed, I free fall for 3 minutes before I open my chute!”
“It takes all day to climb out of my boots!
“I can walk on stilts under a pregnant amoeba!”
“I drink coffee with a long straw because I can’t reach the table!”
“I have to jump up to look down!”
One short-timer calendar I liked had the last week sliding out of the ordered rectangular blocks and into a sort of yellow brick road that led to the boarding ladder of a commercial jet. Many were just a picture of an alluring lady with numbers.
Orignal ROK Short-timer calendar. This one is pristine.
We would count down if someone asked: “How short are you?”
“Five and a wake-up,” we might say. That mode of counting let’s you discount the day you are in, and the one that you leave. I find myself reverting to that way of thinking when I am in the Little Village By the Bay.
Looking out at the gray steel white-capped waters of the Bay, surging left-to-right, I am thinking it is two and a wake-up for me, and just a wake up for Raven.
There are several things that need to get done today, not to mention raking the lawn, but whatever happens, it is Raven’s last day of independent, albeit assisted, living.
Spike reported he had escaped again, and was out in the hallway in just his Big Boy pants and a polo shirt, having lost Big Mama and the sanctuary of their place in the endless corridor of his mind.
Just two meals and a wake-up. It is time.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com