Confessions of a Military Wife by Mollie Gross Page A

Tropics model.
    I started in. “Oh my God, my husband was right! He said you looked just like a big Black Arnold Schwarzenegger and you do! Look at you two! Stop everything! Give me the camera!”
    I told his wife to come and stand by me to look at our two men. I went on and on about how handsome they were and how they should do a calendar together.
    She was laughing. He was laughing.
    I asked her if she “Bunco-ed” and she said she did. She lived near Christa, so I assured her she would be attending the next party.
    Meet and greet accomplished. I thought I was so cute and charming.
    Later that night, Jon and I tried dancing. We had taken a few swing lessons and thought we were “hot to trot.”
    By that time, however, we were both tipsy. To make matters even more interesting, I had not eaten. I could barely breathe or move because of my girdle.
    The next thing I know, Jon shoots me under his arm knocking off my nest of fake curls.
    I screamed, “My weave, my weave!” as it flew through the air and landed on the ground. I was on my hands and knees crawling around looking for my weave when I found it next to Captain Rodriquez’s shoe.
    I jumped up and said, “My weave got snatched off. I gotta go to the bathroom.”
    And I took off.
    The next morning I was horrified to realize I had made a total fool of myself in front of my husband’s CO and his wife.
    Then I started thinking that Rodriquez is not an African American name. It’s Spanish in origin. I had made comments about this man’s ethnicity, but what if he was not black? My husband had been born and raised in Idaho and didn’t see a black person until he was in college!
    Why had I listened to him? I had been raised in the South and knew black people. In fact, a black woman had taken care of me until I was 12.
    I cried all morning.
    Clearly, the Rodriquez family thought I was a freak and a racist. Or that I was a Southern country bumpkin who had never met a Latino, Puerto Rican, or Mexican, and so thought anyone with tan or dark skin was black.
    I bawled all weekend. I could not believe I had screamed in front of this man that I had lost my weave. I made Jon promise to apologize for me when he went back to work.
    Jon talked to his new CO that Monday. He said it went something like this: “Sir, may I please speak to you about something my wife is upset about. It concerns your ethnicity. She is afraid she offended you.”
    Captain Rodriquez laughed in response. He said that he actually is a little bit of everything and that being African American is a big part of his heritage. He told Jon to tell me not to worry.
    We ended up becoming great friends and later laughed about the incident. His wife and I still encouraged the boys to do a calendar, but they never did.
    RANKISM
    There is an issue in the military that can get very ugly: “rankism.” This is discrimination against someone based upon their own or their spouse’s rank.
    The rank system is part of the military’s core structure, which is fine for the service men, but not so fine for the dependents.
    Excessive fraternization among the ranks is just not acceptable. You don’t want to spend weekends drinking beer, cutting farts, or watching your boss and his wife get into a fight. When you do that, you can’t maintain a certain level of respect at work.
    There have to be boundaries, especially when you’re talking about leadership roles in life and death decisions.
    However, some dependents take this to mean they have a license to act like they are better than others. Some dependents think their husband’s rank means they do not have to be accountable for their actions.
    Neighborhoods on base are divided up by rank. As a result, certain people always socialize together. Clubs are also set up by rank to avoid fraternization.
    And yet, the tension about rank between dependents goes both ways.
    Del Mar housing included Navy and Marines living on the same base. At that time we had Warrant Officers, 1st