After college, why sign up for the military?

[Nords]

Anyway I suspect the real purpose of NPS is to make us have children. I, and it seemed that nearly every one of my married classmates, had their first (except the ones having their second) child at NPS. (Remember La Mesa housing Nords? We called it fertility hill)

Best duty station we ever had. Freshly married, we scraped together spare change to buy a condo and made 16% profit in two years, learned to SCUBA dive, and made a lot of long-term friendships. I even went to class a couple days a week. NPS threw the best Navy balls I can remember, and I think it had to do with the scarcity of O-6/flag attendees.

La Mesa was guaranteed to give you at least two of the three: a dog, dependents, or a divorce.

Our first week there we went to a baby shower in one of the octoplexes. (It wasn't unusual for an octoplex, four duplexes surrounding a grassy courtyard, to have well over a dozen kids playing in there.) Spouse and I, both being O-3s, naturally headed for the beer keg and the sea-story competition. Halfway there a flying wedge of officer's wives cut mine out of the herd and took her away for an interrogation. I didn't see her for almost 30 minutes.

Next Monday a surface nuclear officer sidled alongside and asked "How much radiation do you guys get exposed to on those subs, anyway?" (10-20 millirem a month underway, maybe 30-40 during inport maintenance. No big deal.) He said "Hunh" and moved on to other topics. However I got the same question about six times that day from various non-submarine officers.

I told the story when I got home-- spouse had a confession. The other spouses had mercilessly harassed her about her child-bearing plans (presumably including me) and just when she was going to catch up to the power curve. Unused to this line of questioning she finally cracked and blurted out "We're waiting until he recovers from his radiation exposure!"

DINKS were not looked upon favorably at NPS...

 

[deserat]

I'm late to this party - but , uhh, yeah, I guess I dig military dudes - ex was one (but got out) and current is one - however, I've also found that guys dig military gals ;-) I even had one guy (not my spouses) say seeing me in a unifom turned him on - hahahahahahahahahah

However, I also dig George Clooeny (his looks, not his politics), Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford - frankly, they are nice eye candy.....remeber the adage "tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

 

[Gumby]

I've also found that guys dig military gals ;-)

Yes we do.

 

[Average Joe]

DINKS were not looked upon favorably at NPS...

I can imagine. I don’t remember even knowing any DINKs there. I can only remember there being one unmarried dude in our loosely defined clique (he and I had some background in common, and became and have remained close friends) and he married the sister of one of our classmates shortly after graduation.

Monterey was definitely a great assignment – not sure if I’d call it the best. Different assignments were good in different ways. Personally, it was a great time of life. It was a welcome lull in tempo. I’d been on the go a lot since wife and I were married a few years earlier. We’d never had a honeymoon until a glorious 8 week vacation right before I reported to NPS – coincidentally we had a son nine months later (water broke while we were at a party probably not so different than the one you describe).
I enjoyed being around the people in my classes so much that I became uncharacteristically sociable and often had friends over and even had some large parties at the house. It was unusual to be in a place full of so many people that I liked so well that I wanted to have them all over. In my curriculum (which made up the majority of my circle of friends since we shared many classes and worked together on many things – and our wives befriended each other, reinforcing the phenomenon) about half of us were non-US officers and it seemed like about half of us (self included) were married to someone from a country other than our own. There were a lot of interesting tales to hear. Among us it was a very collegial environment – all peers regardless of differences in rank – a sort of vacation from concerns about maintaining good order and discipline. We were all doing the same thing and were charged with responsibility pretty much only for ourselves. That doesn’t happen very often.

 

[Rustic23]

In 1970 we were at the Defense Language School in Monterey, and lived in Carmel. BIL was at the NPS at the same time. One thing we commented on was the great selection of cloths at the NAPS exchange!

 

[MikeD]

What a laughable diatribe! Did you get that from the NRA or Rethuglican Party talking points? Maybe from "Rush?"

I am not clear on the meaning of your post. Could you re-phrase it in a civil manner?

Mike D.

 

[Martha]

I think Brewer is now done with this topic and people have had their say regarding his post, so let's let it go.

So, back to eduction and joining the military.