Looking Forward to Summer

Back in California, I headed up north for a weekend, to attend my brother’s college graduation in Reno.  I hadn’t ever visited his college in the four years he had been there, so it was interesting to see what he had been up to.  He was still doing work in the machine shop the night before graduation, on some off his own projects.  It was amusing to see that he was the one that everyone came to with questions about any of the equipment or tools, and for advice on how to do particularly complex operations.  He was clearly the most knowledgeable person there.  It reminded me of my own experiences in the computer labs at school.  It was probably the first time I really identified with my brother in any significant way, or related to his perspective at all.  He was no longer just an impatient source of annoyance, but an accomplished and respected member of his community of engineers.

 

I returned to LA immediately, and continued to work on processing the footage from Key West, and support the editorial efforts.  We soon had extended versions finished of the two scenes we had shot.  These were used as proof of concept, to show that our plan to use active duty personnel as the main characters in our movie was a workable idea, and to generate interest with potential investors.

 

I also tried my first stint with baby sitting, taking care of Scott’s kids one evening.  The church was putting on some sort of women’s event, which involved all of his usual options for that role, so I agreed to step in, since his kids knew me from Bible Study.  It was admittedly made easier by the fact that they had put the kids to bed before I arrived, and I was just going to watch a movie while they were out hosting the event for a couple of hours.  But as soon as they left, their three year old was up, asking for his parents.  I averted the impending crying episode by playing the “you’re a big boy now” card, which actually worked better than I expected.  I helped him use the bathroom, and then eventually got him to go back to bed.  The rest of the evening was uneventful, but I was relieved when they returned, and didn’t repeat the experience for another five years.

 

The next project on the movie schedule was the submarine shoot, which I was of course slated to be on.  Unfortunately it fell during the week of summer staff training at camp, and while that was disappointing, I didn’t think twice about it.  I always enjoyed staff training at camp, and it was the foundation for the social relationships of the rest of the summer, but I had done it three times before.  On the other hand, getting a trip on an active Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine as a civilian, was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  So I planned to arrive at camp a week or two late that summer, after I had returned to shore, and ingested the footage at the office.  I regretted that I would miss part of camp that summer, but that was just how the schedule was working out.  Foreseeing those potential issues in advance, I had asked for a role with less direct responsibility that summer.  Based on my work schedule, I couldn’t even commit to entire weeks, to be a counselor.  So I had been assigned to the newly created “program staff” as a volunteer.  But that wouldn’t take effect until I actually arrived at camp, and it didn’t look like that would be happening until a few weeks into what was already a shortened schedule.