Quick Army update

Army Christmas Dinner
(Charissa gushes about a Corporal she just met!)

We had our Christmas dinner tonight, and I sat beside a corporal I'd never met before, and I'm going to call him Cpl Kars. Cpl Kars is amazing. He has this....etiquette, this amazing etiquette. Throughout the entire night, he called me "ma'am", a title reserved for female officers, MWOs, CWOs and Base CWOs.

Sometime during dinner, he and a MCpl got into some sort of argument, where the MCpl said something like, "Come on, I dare ya, I DARE ya!" So Cpl Kars stood up and began walking around the long table to the MCpl's side. At this point, another soldier was standing by the MCpl, so the MCpl said, "I order you to stand still, right there, and--FACE THAT WAY, THAT WAY" to try to keep that soldier between himself and Cpl Kars. Hehe! Cpl Kars ended up jokingly punching the MCpl and retaining his honour. Heeeee...

During dinner, we could pass requests to the head table. Requests were mostly for who would sing what Christmas carol. I gesticulated to Cpl Kars asking if he had a pen; he discretely borrowed one from the MCpl for me, and I wrote a request for anyone who hadn't yet sung to sing. Then I passed the pen back to Cpl Kars, who took it very discretely. A few minutes later, I passed along the note paper, and he took it with such...discrete-ness! A casual observer (from his front) would not have suspected anything! It was amazing! ..I wonder if he's trained in counter-interrogation or something...

He pronounces "Corporal" as "Corp'rral" with the emphasis on the "al", and the "rr" rolled. I think it's a Czech accent.

After dinner, he, Pte Williams and I were chatting. Apparently they took BMQ together. After a while, he excused himself as another Corporal came by our table. Cpl Kars said, "Excuse me. I will accompany the Corp'rral now."

He stands perfectly at attention. "In fine military fashion" comes to mind.

... When I sat down with him and Pte Williams, he seemed kinda shocked or pleasantly surprised that I would come sit with them! Oh, he's wonderful! I like him!

Also, he rolls his "R"s in words like "party".

I will be sad and miss him if he goes touring in Afghanistan. I'm so scared he'll get blown to bits and I'll never hear from him again. Ahhh....


Also

Apparently I'm mature! Whee! (It's too bad I can't tell this story even here, for confidentiality, though. Just, that someone pulled me aside and charged me to be responsible for something, and he chose me because I seem the most wise or mature or "able to tell when something [IS A CERTAIN WAY] and can/will do something about it".)


In other news

I looked at an old photo of James ("old" being almost exactly one year old), and it was so strange--I felt all those feelings come back to me, and they were...different. Wiser? More mature? I don't know. I would still love him--romantically, I mean--if I clapped eyes on him again. I'm a bit nervous for his house-warming party next week.

I went back through my old journal entries from when James and I first started going together... Wow. I mean, I was so articulate and...profound. I bled poetry--it was so easy to write beatifically about his dimples or eyelashes or skinniness or the way he folds his hands.

He is a beautiful human being. I miss him terribly, and in too many ways.

--Charissa