Veteran's Day - Standing in Line

I don't like to go get free meals and stuff on Veteran's Day. I have a few reasons, none of which are salty or horrible or typical of what you see in the media about PTSD-having Vets (hate crowds, isolation, stuff like that).

I just don't like to stand in lines.

To Quantify:
It's not 100% of the time. In life sometimes you've got to stand in line. There are many factors that make standing in line acceptable or unacceptable. The main metric I use is a scale of how much I paid to how long I've got to stand in line. Also weather and indoors or outdoors, who I am in line with, why I am in line plays a role. I found that I can't stand to stand in line for a big ComicCon after I've paid $40 to get into it then stand in another line for 90 minutes or more for a picture or autograph I paid $100 for.

Being in the military means you are always in some line. Your life and career is in a line. Your behavior? Better be in line. Food? Get in line. Going to class? Marching there... in a straight line. Invading a country? Biggest line you will ever be in. You're whole life and existence is to be in some form of a line.

One time, when I ran the paint locker on the USS Shasta, I had a line that was 20 people long. I was issuing them all paint. These weren't my normal crew (Deck Apes). I had Operations and Personnel people in that line. We were having a ship-wide uniform and space inspection by the Skipper in a few days so everyone was tidying up their spaces and painting everything.

Black spray paint and blue enamel? Get in that line.

Another time, and I swear this happened, I was in a line to get in a line for a lunch line. The USS St. Louis was getting some updates for it's galley and mess decks so it got secured for a few weeks. The base galley in Sasebo Japan was about a mile from where our ship was dry-docked. They provided us with buses to get to the base galley and back. First I waited in line to get on the bus. Then I got in a line to get my ration card (lunch ticket) issued. Then, I got into the line that got you food. Base galley food is good! Base galley food was always better than ship food. That's no shot at the Mess Specialists - I blame it on the supply line.

The St. Lou was an amphibious ship thus we had a lot of Marines on board all the time. I have a lot of respect for Marines. Loyal, dutiful, sharpshooting Marines. All Marines are trained riflemen and all Marines are hard. It's their job, to be hard and be able to shoot well regardless of what their rate says they do. They're un-erring discipline was notable and un-matched by any of us surface sailors.

That said we'd still mess with them when they were out to sea with us. One of the hardest pranks to pull off was making them stand in line for nothing. Well, it's not that hard. All any sailor would have to do is stand still in a random but reasonable place like you were waiting for something and in a few minutes you'd get Marines standing in line behind you.

I did this once and got five Marines to line up behind me. I walked away as a saltier Marine explained to them I was messing with them. I felt bad for about 10 seconds and went about my day - off to some random watch or painting something no doubt.

Today there is a long list of places that give away free things on Veteran's Day. I've partaken and seen some of the lines that can form up. These last few years I have not partaken (as places offering free stuff have proliferated); I do not want to stand in those lines if I've the day off and on my own time. I don't want to stand in line for free stuff celebrating my time in service, in which I spent much of that time standing in line for free stuff.