Fit For Command

Imagine standing in formation back in the day. The CO relieves the battery first sergeant and asks you if intelligence alone is the determining factor for fitness to lead the unit. You think that you are smart, so here is your big chance. The right answer and just maybe the CO will promote you on the spot and turn the unit over to the smart guy. Ha, ha, of course we know that intelligence alone does not make a person a leader. Albert Einstein was not selected as overall Allied commander during WWII. The generals and admirals did not go through the most rigorous intelligence testing and selection before one came out as the obvious choice. No, leadership is something different. Volumes have been written attempting to define what makes a person a leader where another fails. Gen. Patton became famous as a combat leader, but often said the wrong thing when it came to politics and diplomacy. He probably would have made an awful, perhaps dangerous, political leader. Was Patton more or less intelligent, or does that have anything at all to do with it? The problem may be that I am not here to write up a tiny primer on leadership for West Point or Annapolis.(Funny, but nobody seems to mention Colorado Springs when they give that military academy example.) No, this blog is about PTSD, but I do have a point going here. The question I want to ask is: does intelligence have anything to do with the potential to develop post-traumatic stress disorder?

Back in the day, Capt. Gates never got around to asking me that leadership question. Quite likely he knew better than to give a smart-a..uh smart guy, intelligent or not, the floor. The training at OCS probably went something like: Never ask discussion questions of the rank and file, for their answers will be rank and you will have time to file an oak into a toothpick before they shut up. On the cruise returning from Beirut via Rota and the eternal cleaning of guns and vehicles, we did receive some materials on PTSD and signs to beware of as we transitioned back to the peacetime Marine Corps. However, the causes of PTSD were always The Event (combat, the bombing, the man next to you got killed, etc.). Nothing was said about what might make a Marine more or less susceptible to begin with. Perhaps zero research had been done on the question at that time. In those days, the diagnosis of PTSD had only recently been defined for Vietnam veterans. What qualities or history prior to combat those PTSD veterans had in common likely wasn't first on the list of things to do for the doctors and nurses. Alleviating the suffering came first I sincerely hope. Can I look around at those I know for some common factors?

My friend Luke served in Desert Storm and developed PTSD. Two of us probably isn't a large enough sample to satisfy the statisticians, but we'll give it a go. Unstable home life? Me, early divorce and then remarriage giving me a stepfather from about the age of 7. Luke, nope, parents remain together to this day. Hmm, not doing so good already. Intelligence: I write daily and am often asked to proofread other's work. Luke: when it comes to the written word, we'll just say Luke's pen was taken and he was given a #2 pencil and told not to damage too much. Luke enjoys math and is good at it. I can't stand the stuff and quickly forget all math that I learn. (It's kind of like a math sieve in my brain. I can pour it in but little is caught.) Three areas and we are not coming up with much in common yet. I read often and do it swiftly and well. It is painful to watch Luke read, and I suspect he would rather watch a good basketball game. We were raised in towns only 40 miles apart, but geography probably has little to do with it. Both of us ended up in Information Technology as a career, but that was after the fact. Perhaps we fled to that career field to avoid the people that make us uncomfortable. Luke is married; I am a bachelor. Luke owns dogs, cats for me. That's just using two of us in trying to find common ground, some before and some after The Event. I think I may have a beginning on why it is so difficult to pick out a recruit and say, "He stands a good chance of developing PTSD, assign him to shore duty or to that remote base in Alaska no one wants to end up at." I wonder, is our memory skill level or ability similar, could that be the key?

Memory recall ability may be useful to command. Leaders such as Hitler and Napoleon, among many others, were said to have near perfect recall. With PTSD that may be a liability as opposed to ability, we recall too much and it comes out during stressful moments. I'm not sure any of us want to give up our memories in total, but giving up a few selected ones might help. I think I've hit upon a movie plotline there, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, if I'm not mistaken in my recall. Some have hypothesized or theorized that taking out or causing the patient to forget a few key memories might help ameliorate or even cure the PTSD. Sounds good so far, grab a few bad memories and, poof!, the PTSD is gone. What else might be lost though? As always, messing about in the mind is fraught with potential peril. What if those few key memories are such a part of us that their removal caused relationships to be destroyed. What if my friend's PTSD was cured, but he no longer loved his wife and had no further interest in his daughter? What if he sold his pickup truck and started driving a flower-decorated '67 VW Beetle? Yikes! That bit alone would make him unfit for command in my book. Hmm, maybe trying to sharpshoot a few memories isn't the right answer. Speaking of memories, I seem to recall a young man who walked into the Marine Corps recruiter and signed up open contract, at a time when bonuses were offered for certain career fields. That wasn't very dern smart of me, I wish I could stop disproving my own theories!

Bucky

Veterans Day 2013

Thank you for your service to this great nation! For my Veterans Day movie this year I have A Bridge Too Far in the Blu-ray player tonight. Back in the day the Allied High Command drew a lot of criticism over this one. Mostly the usual, not moving fast enough, missing a great opportunity, etc, etc. Vision over the rear of the donkey being what it is, many voices called for heads to roll from the comfort of distance. We served though, and each of us knows that the movement of modern armies takes place in just short of forever time. The German general in the movie sums it up rather nicely, "We are retreating faster than they can advance." Cornelius Ryan's great book tells the story well too. The man on the ground pays the price for mistakes made at the HQ. Seldom do we hear of the planners and plotters suffering the effects of shell shock, combat fatigue, or PTSD, whichever flavor of distress your generation faced in their day, and endures even now.

I grew up the way many did in my generation. The war in Vietnam played on the television for our parents, safely distant from my young mind. The Korean War or police action sat comfortably forgotten too recent for the history books but too far in the past for news media. The war to read about, watch in movies, and play out in the back yard was the great one, WWII. Good guys (us) and the bad guys (them). The good guys won and the bad guys lost, what did those veterans have but pride? Ticker tape parades, kissing girls on the streets and beaches, that was the life of glory for the warrior. Flopping over snowdrifts in our large back yard, I remember holding my 'rifle', an aluminum baseball bat held backward-like, and taking down hordes of the evil enemy. Of course, the warmth and dry clothes of the house sat only a few yards away. No dreadful winter march with comrades dropping in the cold, never to rise again in many cases. I wonder today how many faces of the dead and dying haunt the dreams of that generation. I suspect they look on my childhood war fantasies with something like horror. Maybe and maybe not, it is hard to tell what a warrior of a bygone day might think.

My neighbor is a vet from that war. His stories are not quite so comfortable as they come out a bit at a time. As far as I know, he did not fall into that percentage of us who suffer the PTSD. However, as he relates the tale of a Jap kamikaze flying into an ammo ship as his destroyer stood off to save itself, I can see that the memory is as clear to him as my presence in his kitchen. On second thought, I might take fuzzy second place in that vision. A trailing ship in the convoy was too close when the ammo ship blew up, and his destroyer returned to pick up survivors. There were no bodies to see from the ammo ship. His story got me to thinking about jobs in the military. What devotion to duty lived in the hearts of sailors assigned to ammo ships? Did the crew suffer unusually high desertion, get extra pay? Look out for those sailors at the liberty port!

On this day we honor the real us, not that imaginary soldier who went in the house when his clothes were wet and the snow a little too cold, but those of us who served where we got assigned in the great lottery of the military service. Some saw combat face to face with the enemy, others from a bit further back. Some of us served in the Middle East, others in the Far East; some in cold or heat, humidity or tongue-swelling dryness, and some far back from the fighting. An ammo ship probably stayed far back from the ragged edge of the front, but phew, how many quarts of sweat did those sailors lose every time an unidentified plane flew overhead? What other necessary and inglorious, unglamorous jobs did other soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and the many other personnel of the military efforts perform back in the day?

I can answer for one, me! Every other day, I marched around from latrine to latrine with my swizzle stick, an engineer's stake, pulled out the cut-off barrels from 'down under' and burned off the shit to ash. Yup, that's me, Bucky, not-so-glorious war hero on the Beirut front, doing the job no one else quite found it necessary to trade for. As the bootest of the battery, the lot fell to me to assume the position of field sanitation engineer. I can tell you these 30 years later that it is dreadfully tough to ignite diesel fuel with a match. A bit of mogas (gasoline) on top does the job much better, but be sure to keep those eyebrows back at a safe distance. The mogas also served to stop the dropping of lit cigarette butts into the barrels after one of the gun bunnies treated 'Petey and the Twins' to an accidental barbecue one night. The job took all day as each gun platoon had a 3-holer and the Seabees had a facility of their own. I trudged quite a few miles over those three months between, um, duty stations as the barrels burned and I stirred the flaming mixture to assure complete combustion. I thought I deserved a medal for this duty, maybe a little gold toilet seat or something.

Years later, I came to realize that this duty may have kept me safe from snipers. Bullets don't grow on trees, evidence in Lebanon to the contrary, and how many snipers worth the title would waste one on the shitter private? I don't seem to recall any of my great war games back in the yard including this sort of thing though. Real war is not often portrayed very well in the movies, though some are closer than others. The duties that keep the army moving forward or cleaned up in the firebase may not gain the recognition in the movies of glory, but we appreciate those jobs as only veterans do for each other. Appreciation, I think, helps much to alleviate the mental distress all parts of combat cause in those who serve. Those who cry over too many medals and awards for a military action probably have never seen the front, or the backside.

Semper Fi, Bucky

The King Steps Down

Happy Halloween to you! A pretentious statement maybe, but I am the king of self-shaming. Many will claim this royal title, and indeed this is one very long throne. We gain this crown through the words and actions of parents, teachers, and other authorities who enter our lives for a season or longer. These authorities teach us to shame ourselves through the simple fact that not all of us can be first in every race or situation. Soon, many of us came to that day in our past when we said, "I'm no good" in so many words deep in the heart. Thus began the long road to crowning ourselves kings of self-shaming.

The documentary on the Navy Sea, Air and Land team training perhaps says it best with their little motivational barb, 'second place is first loser.' This is one of many absurdities in military training, for even the highly selective Seal teams want to graduate more than one new operator out of each training class. Anyone who graduates to the Seal trident can hardly be called a loser. The difficulty of basic training programs is to get the stupid mistakes out of the way in training. The problems come later when some of us hold on to that first bit of training, the breaking down bit where everyone is shamed for the slightest error or failure. We begin to carry around the voice of the drill instructor or training chief or whatever with us to shame the self for perfectly normal errors nearly everyone makes the first time something is attempted. Some may develop a social anxiety because of this negative perfectionism we learn.

The social anxiety grows from the I'm-no-good thinking to the self-shame of negative perfectionism until finally the person cannot but run from social situations where we are the least bit disadvantaged. Seeking a new job, opening a bank account, a government function, or any other circumstance that turns us into a supplicant or grants us the weaker position from ignorance and lack of experience becomes difficult to overcome. A buddy in Beirut, Mike, often used the saying, you think you're the best thing since sliced bread. What is the opposite saying? I guess we come to the plate thinking that we are the worst thing since powdered eggs. Maybe someone out there likes powdered eggs, but we had them like every day in Beirut and I can't stand that taste to this day. The battle is joined!

This blog entry is a great example. I have doubts about what I have written. Who am I to say what is what about PTSD or anxiety or whatever? That is the negative perfectionism I have referred to. If I can't do it perfectly, then I want to quit. I am in a disadvantaged position because I don't know everything about PTSD and I don't have the services of a professional editor for this writing and I will post it without a week to review and rewrite it. Time to flip it over! Who does know everything about mental illness? If there is one, he or she had better quit goofing off and publish the cure. A blog is a blog because it is personal without benefit of professional editing and time-sapping rewrites. I can write something that will help others who suffer similar problems in social situations. This entry probably won't win any prizes in the perfect essay contest. I could spend a year doing research and rewrites, but people need help now. Even if I can offer nothing more than a sympathetic, informal writing that lets someone out there know that he is not alone in suffering, I need to think well of myself and get it out there on the web.

There is the key, I think, to our rebuilding. We need to stop the self-shaming and begin thinking well of the self, including our performance and ability. No, I won't do everything perfectly, only God is perfect. Flip over the bad thoughts that say you and I are no good, or first loser, and think of the good we have to offer. You survived another day with PTSD, a victory! I went to a new place and bought a newspaper, said hello to the clerk too! A clear victory over the urge to stay home. It is time for the king of self-shaming to abdicate! Record every accomplishment, no matter how small you may think it is. Wait a couple of weeks and look back over those daily accomplishments, and we may be surprised how far we have come. Constant vigilance! as Professor Moody advised Harry Potter and his classmates, we need it too in eliminating those negative, perfectionistic thoughts that cause quitting or not starting. It almost seems sappy, but start looking in the mirror and telling yourself how talented and good you are. Where has that other thinking got us?

Bucky

Getting There IS The Battle

The 30th anniversary of the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut arrives on October 23rd. On my Facebook newsfeed, I noticed that some veterans made reservations, purchased tickets, and completed other preparations necessary to attend the reunion, but then faced the real battle - getting there. I don't mean hitchhiking or seeking an overbooked plane flight, but the battle of the mind we face in making the trip as the anxiety grabs the heart and guts with a nasty twist. As a veteran of Grenada/Lebanon, I can sympathize with that particular agony.

This anxiety is not your run-of-the-mill nervousness most folks feel when going away for a weekend. This is more like the onset of the stomach flu. That time before eruptions have begun, but you know something is very wrong down below. The guts seem to twist around themselves into a Gordian knot, and then they reach up and give the heart a tug, or a push, or something that just feels, well, like you're going to die.

I forgot to count how many times I have got up on a Sunday morning, showered, shaved, breakfasted...you know the drill. Dressed in my church clothes, I sit and wait like a good Marine vet, prepared well ahead of time. Then, the thoughts begin, followed by the feelings down below. Head call, potty break, whatever you want to call it, one after the other. It would just be easier to not go, and often that proves my only option. Immediate relief? No, often the symptoms require hours or an overnighter to burble on back down to a more normal level of tension.

Don't eat the day before, so the guts have nothing to twist on? Tried that; add hunger to the awful feelings churning down below. That combination reminds me of the prep for surgery; not exactly a remedy for calming the nerves and placating the mind. Problem solving helps, and it is an activity the non-sufferers love to engage in, God bless 'em, but listen up now: sometimes we lose the battle of getting there.

Avoidance of situations happens. It is one of the symptoms of the malady. There is no shame here, or at least there shouldn't be any, but sometimes we fight that too. There are times that I even lose the battle of writing about it. Surely that should be a time free of anxiety? No, I suffer less physical symptoms, but the maelstrom of the mind doesn't always shut down so easily. I wish that I could give every PTSD/anxiety/TBI/separation anxiety sufferer, veteran or civilian, a pill that immediately stopped the churning, fearful feeling we face so often. But I don't have one yet.

I once faced some hard words at my workplace after I almost made it to the airport for a work assignment, but then had to turn around and go home when the symptoms overwhelmed me. The loss of money from the plane ticket and other non-refundable deposits they could compute and see on the spreadsheet, and the company was not happy about it. The PTSD problem I don't believe they ever understood. Words they tried and spoke, but over time the PTSD cost me, of that I have no doubt. Does it cost me in getting another job? Sure, the same problems I have getting to church or struggle with in going to a reunion assault me each and every time I think about applications, interviews, and other such jobber things.

Some nut from back in the old country, Nietzsche, if I'm not mistaken, once said: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Well, that psychonut was full of horse manure. That which did not kill us can make us truly miserable the remainder of our earthly lives. Praise God it doesn't happen all the time, and at times we do win the battle of getting there. When the trip comes and one of us gets mugged by the beast on the way and must return home, let us gather to support and not condemn. Those without the PTSD will condemn with looks and ledgers, but let us defend our fellows. And, I'll keep looking for that miracle pill.

God bless and defend you,
Bucky

Is Fearless The Right Answer?

Confusion reigns! I watched a movie yesterday in which an actress plays the role of an actress playing a role before interviewers in order to pad her acting resume. But that wasn't the thing that alarmed me. In the role, the actress claimed to have been a victim of extreme fear until she committed suicide and was revived after five minutes of death to "come back" fearless. One of the interviewers leaps up to call her a liar and strip the mask away. Very dramatic, and I'm glad the writer or director of the film stopped that nonsense before we watched a real horror begin. Imagine the trauma to the world if such a thing was reported to have worked. News cameras and their little talking heads covering thousands of victims of extreme fear lining up to be killed for a few minutes in order to return fearless...not good. Extreme solutions to our problems may sound good in a movie, but let's not go there, please.

Is fearless the answer to our problem? At first glance, to cure a fear or anxiety disorder via taking away all fear fits the bill nicely. However, fear is not always a problem. When we speak of fear as a caution, such as not fearlessly placing a hand on the hot burner of the kitchen range, then we have a fear that we want and need for our survival, or at least the survival of the skin of a hand or two. I once fearlessly placed the end of my finger into a car cigarette lighter. I had watched my mother do it before that, in case you asked. Adults know how to skim a finger over a surface quickly to avoid a burn, kids do not. Of course, the lighter 'lit' the end of my finger, though not enough for me to smoke it. I calmly placed the lighter somewhere on the floor of the car, exited the vehicle in a slightly anxious manner, and made it to the kitchen sink after running over one cat and taking the screen door off its hinges. As I ran cold water over my still sizzling digit, I got chewed out for dropping a hot cigarette lighter on the carpeting in the car; the vacuum of my departure evidently failing to clear the hot little beast from the car entirely.

Another kind of fear is closer to the point. The fear played on in the horror movies I watched yesterday that is, or fear of the uncanny as C.S. Lewis named it. Supernatural fear or fear of the ghost in the next room is what I speak of here. These days, thanks to reality television, some of us run in fear from a report of a ghost, others run to see it. The reason such a thing is uncanny is that a ghost should not be seen at all. A thing that does not exist should have the courtesy to not be visible to us. If the thing reflects light and is seen by the naked eye - clothed eyes being somewhat difficult to see with - then it exists. If the thing is 'seen' by our mind or soul, then why do our eyes (or camera) need to be pointed in its direction? And for that matter, why should it be more visible in less light? Uncanny that. I'm not sure we can cure that sort of fear, but it may bear a likeness to the fear we do want to remove.

The fears that arise from mental illness are phantoms in their own way. Anxiety shows us future visions that never come to pass. PTSD flashbacks show us visions of what was and is no more. Certainly, to be fearless of these sorts of visions is a goal worthy of achieving. A flash of vision back to a combat situation should not be freighted with terror for us, but it is. A view of some circumstance that is unlikely at best and impossible in most of our anxious visions should not cause avoidance of an event that should be a time of pleasure for us, but that too causes extreme fear. The vision of the mind is not real, but is it reality?

The body may rest in bed, but if the mind is walking a trail in Afghanistan, Iraq, Beirut, or Vietnam then reality is what the mind says it is. In the moment of the flashback, and the same with the intense daydream of the anxiety vision, the reality is where the body believes it is and the reactions to the fear are real. Severing the mind to body connection might provoke undesirable consequences, so that probably isn't the solution we seek. (There's your "D'oh!" for the week.) Can we make the vision fearless then? Has anyone found a cure for a nightmare?

As long as the mind drags the body along for the ride, I don't see how we can make it fearless. What we are left with is eliminating the vision, or modifying the reaction. If practice alone provided the answer, then all of us would now be experts in flashback effect modification or anxious vision reaction suppression. Unfortunately, my body continues to react to the phantoms, and fearlessness remains a dream for the movie scripts.

Bucky

Blam, Blam, Blam, Veteran Goes Off

Maybe not one of my better titles, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Another shooting incident, rampage, or mass murder has occurred, depending upon your political views and how you want to color it. A veteran took up a firearm and killed people for no apparent reason at the Washington Navy Yard. A location made at least a little bit famous by the show NCIS. I'm a fan of the Veteran's Administration (VA) medical care, but I don't particularly like their press release. The VA released a circle-the-wagons and hide-the-bureaucrats sort of statement that we, I believe, are fully justified in hating. "According to VA records, he[Alexis] never sought an appointment from a mental health specialist." Uh, does one just get up one morning and realize that mental illness has arrived like the flu?

In speaking with a sister I had not seen in many years, I found out that she has suffered two major bouts of depression. I was curious to know how she was first diagnosed, and found similarities with my own experience. At least from two examples the answer is: No, a person does not just get up one morning knowing that mental illness has arrived like a flu bug. Try calling Human Resources or a boss and using that excuse. "Sorry, I can't come in today. Mental illness is going 'round the family this morning. Two kids have come down with it and I'm pretty sure I have too." On the other hand, we have a fear.

This fear is brought on by some old Hollywood movies, more than a few B or C level movies, and the occasional novel (maybe more than occasional). In this scenario, a man or woman (more women in the C movies) arrive at some grim hospital and are given some sort of mental health examination. In the baser movies, the examinees are typically young and attractive women and the examination involves removal of clothing, apparently to check for some sort of mental illness tattoo in private places. The character is diagnosed with a mental illness and locked up forever in the Devil's Hospital for the Persecution of the Lead Character. Unfortunately, there is an historical basis for this sort of novel plot or movie script. Some hospitals and institutions for those judged insane or mentally ill in the past were true horrors, and thus we have this fear.

How do we fix the conflict between the stigma of seeking help for a mental illness, the fear brought on by the old stories, our desire to have a firm diagnosis and get well, bureaucratic blame avoidance techniques, and a citizen's protection from unreasonable search and seizure? From all of that, I can hypothesize without too much fear of disproval that there will not be an easy answer.

For veterans and the VA it is unfortunate that we have another story of a veteran going off to live down. For the VA bureaucracy, they will spend some time doing the bureaucratic blame/spin/avoidance game for a while. For Congress, they can form a committee and call in the VA chief to ask for his top or bottom end as a sacrifice. For all of us, we have many victim's families to pray for and comfort as best we can. Mr. Alexis' mother had perhaps the best reaction, in contrast to the VA bureaucracy, she apologized to the victim's families right away and noted sadly that she could not ask her son, "Why?" Many of us I think can sympathize with that last question. We have done the same in many other shooting incidents. As of yet, no definitive answer is forthcoming.

Due to the stigma or the fear, Mr. Alexis did not know to seek help for mental illness or was afraid of being locked up for it. He may have been ignorant of his condition since to diagnose ones mental illness with the very mental organ that is ill is difficult at best. I sought help from God in prayer. He responded with a piece of an advertisement in my home that said in large, red print, "Get Help!" I got the message and took a mental health status questionnaire into my family doctor. Others have sought opinions from close friends. Very close friends and in private, since mental health questions are not generally received with less than absolute mirth and hilarity in an office or locker room setting. If you broach the question at a party, try to do it after several drinks and use a big, goofy smile. Dr. Phil is another option, but not everyone gets an all-expense paid trip out to New York to meet with him.

Walking up to the VA clinic or a mental health clinic to ask for a mental health evaluation still bears a stigma. Those of us with some experience have worked to eliminate or mitigate it. Shame from those with no understanding (and complete ignorance) does not help those in need to seek out the appropriate help. Be alert for those who might approach you with a quiet, "Can you help me..." Accompany someone to the mental health clinic or professional. If you have overcome the stigma, tell everyone else the visit is for you and the person in need is helping you out. Yes, it is a lie, but imagine that person failing to get help and 'going off' as Mr. Alexis did on Monday.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself, Bucky

I Want to Pay Taxes Again!

Now that's just crazy talk. If any more proof of my mental illness were needed, that title should provide all that is necessary. I stand by my statement. I want to pay taxes again. First, you may need to try going without a tax burden for a while, as I have, to experience what it is like living on the ragged edge of financial disaster. In 2012, I paid with my final credit card the outstanding tax due on my January 2011 401k withdrawal. We complain about our amount of taxes more than actually paying them in America, and a final 401k withdrawal is a good way to realize what is meant by tax burden. I owed no income taxes for 2012 or thus far in 2013, because I have no income. Before 2013 comes to a close in a little over 3 months, I have decided that paying income tax is a better way to go than earning so little (or none at all) that I do not have to pay. This is not a purely financial decision.

The Social Security system is supposed to be a good investment. The removal of the investment amount from the paycheck without asking is a different matter, and I'll leave that debate alone for this blog. However, we pay income tax to purchase government services, including helping those who through unfortunate circumstances cannot pay their own way for a time. We pool our tax money and the government provides defense forces, judicial systems, regulatory authorities and a myriad (it seems) of other stuff we may need. The government also sometimes adventures overseas in various ways and pays off the occasional dictator, but that too can be set aside for now. I served as a part of those defense forces, and in a couple of those military adventures. However, I did not in the four years of my service expect that was nearly enough for a free ride for the remainder of my little life. Medical care, sure, especially if they poisoned me through the drinking water on Camp Lejeune, but a free ride, no, I want to pay taxes again.

Taxes can sound like a dirty subject in our popular repartee. We do not want to hear about paying more taxes, and sometimes we think it would be nice to not have to pay them. I am guilty of that last bit, and I got the chance to experience life without paying. No income = no income tax is not an equation a person wants to find himself living, please take it from me. Paying taxes keeps roads under the truck tires, prevents enemies from overrunning our nation, and allows the printing of a truly prodigious Code of Federal Regulations. What would we do without our dear government? Some folks have an answer to that, but I choose to get back in the system and help out in my small way. Easy words, how do I translate them to action?

PTSD limits my access to some jobs. The job of emergency services in most places involves responding to many auto accidents. This service includes EMTs, police, fire and rescue, dispatchers, and hospital medical staff. Serving in any of those capacities might not be a good idea for me. A person in dire need of medical attention from a car accident does not want to hear his first responder ask for a timeout to deal with PTSD symptoms. I can understand that. Such a thing may not happen, but why take a chance with a person's pain or life? Cross some jobs off my list. Check. Other jobs may require too much hypocrisy. Cold calling, or what is known as outbound telemarketing is not for me. Any job where I feel trapped by the situation may trigger ol' Petey. Basement offices, windowless cubicles, a shift job where I cannot leave, all may trigger the symptoms of uncontrolled anxiety. Of course, schools or restaurants with their noise and racket probably won't work for me. But, still, I want to pay taxes again.

All that and there are still jobs for me. Just need to find one in the remote wilderness of Colorado. I may indeed be a proven nut, but bring on the income tax, I'm tired of living poor!

Bucky