"Dear Shereen"
2010-01-26, 1:48 p.m.

So my cousin (My dad's sisters' eldest daughter) and I are fairly close. Her father is American, and she, like I, was raised in the periphery of the Palestinian culture. We love it dearly and identify with it through choice rather than solely through circumstance. We are both also the eldest of large families- she's the eldest of 6, I'm the eldest of 8. We also both LOVE reading and writing, and love history (though different types of history- I prefer social history, she likes war stories, though not exclusively).

Anyways, I adore my cousin. Every week she writes me a good 10 page email about her life- she is a journalist and teacher by trade (well, almost, she's working on her last semester, but she already works for a newspaper, and teaches). Anyways-every week she writes me a 10 page email about her life, and it almost always includes stories about her work with USO in McCord, about an hour outside of Seattle, Washington.

This week there was a story in it that really tickled me, and I wanted to share it with all of you. She also sent me a picture of a water color she'd completed which I ABSOLUTELY love, but I no longer have a place to store pictures on the internet in order to embed them here. Anyways, on to the excerpt.

(a little bit of context- the main topic of the email is how much she hates word limits. She's applying to graduate school right now in English, and had to write a 250 word admissions essay).

By Sharon Coward 26 January, 2010

"I am not a happy camper when asked to shorten my writing. Teresa, the journalism advisor and a good friend, would tell me when we were working together that I needed to shorten an article I'd written. We'd go back and forth about what paragraphs could be removed and what couldn't. Once she told me that she was trying to shorten my article on Running Start students and she just couldn't, which is a sign that I'd written it "tightly" and in good form. I learned a lot about the art of condensing in journalism. You know, being brief and pithy. I love that word. Pithy. I should make a list of all the words I love. I have a short list of words that I learned from people. For instance, iota. Learned that one from my old psychology teacher who now lives with his wife in Norway. Or ad hoc, from my old polisci teacher and friend. And I smile every time I think of the word waddle. I picked it up at McChord last summer. Actually, there's an amusing story to that one.

It was when one of the Strkyer Brigades left for Iraq. I think it was 4th BDE. Yep, that's right. Col. Norris' brigade. Of the trio of colonels overseas right now, Col. Norris was the only one I saw at McChord. He's also the only one I know of who shook each of his soldiers' hands as they boarded the plane. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, so one of the sergeants was this older gentleman named Hollis, I think. I go by the names I see on the name tapes, and when I remember this story, I tend to confuse this guy with the Sergeant Major, Huggins. I'm quite sure this guy was named Hollis, though. I think Huggins was the sergeant I signed in who started talking about how, whenever he reads books to his kids, he always makes it a story about the Red Sox and the Yankees. "The Red Sox are the mice, and the Yankees are the cat," he said, to the laughter of the soldier he was talking to. Unless, that was Hollis too. I'm not sure anymore. It's been several months.

Anyway, so it's towards the end of the deployment, and I'm in TH (the hanger-like building next door, aptly titled "Troop Holding. Really, there's a sign on the front that says this. It's where the soldiers are processed before flying. It sits on the edge of the flightline) waiting for the call to board the plane. The only reason I'm allowed in TH is because we're handing out care packages. I love this part of the job, because I get to see a side of the military that few others do. Can you imagine a hanger full of 300 soldiers, mostly young men, in full uniform and carrying unloaded weapons, chattering and resting and sometimes even sleeping as they wait for their plane ride to Iraq or Afghanistan? It's the hardest thing to describe. You can practically feel the anticipation and apprehension and fear and sadness and excitement, all rolled into one common emotion the army always manages to elicit: resignation, because the army is infamous for making people wait. We do a lot of waiting in TH. Wait for roll call. Wait for the baggage crew to get all the baggage on the plane. Wait for the airman to show up for escort duty across the flightline. Wait for the call to board the plane.

So on that August afternoon, I was partaking in that time-honored army tradition. I was waiting, for the call to board the plane. Herb, retired Army veteran, Seattle Seahawks fan, and volunteer extra-ordinare whose nickname is "The Godfather of Ft. Lewis," was waiting with me. Herb likes to talk to the soldiers, and I think he knows all the higher-ranking folks at Ft. Lewis. I like to watch everyone, and listen to conversations, and sometimes talk to the other volunteers.

I'm standing near the window with Herb and this sergeant Hollis, listening to them talk about the air force in rather derogatory terms (army loves to beat down on the air force, and the feeling is mutual). Hollis launches into this yarn about his days as a paratrooper (I'm assuming that's what he was, at least. Why else would a soldier jump out of a perfectly good airplane?), about the time he had on all his parachuting gear and it's super heavy and bulky, and the air force parked the plane way out on the flightline. So he, in his full gear and rather disgruntled attitude, had to walk all the way out to the plane. "We weren't walking; we were waddling," he continues in animated fashion.

Later, still waiting around for the plane, Hollis excuses himself and tells Herb that he's going to use the restroom before they board the plane. Herb, who guesses that he won't have much time, urges him to hurry. "I would waddle faster!" he yells to Hollis' retreating back.

I haven't read that word in the same way since. "