Monday, August 27, 2007

• The Taming of the Shrews

  Now there is going to be a meeting.

  I'm not sure what it's going to be about.  Is it going to be a mediation?  Will it be a chastising?  Will it be a group eviction?  What is going to happen?  I got a call from my neighbor earlier this morning.
  "Uhhh...did you get the call?"
  "What call?"
  "Rumor has it there is a mandatory meeting for all the residents of the street.  I just got my call..."
  "Oh man...seriously?"
  "Yep.  They told me to tell my husband he has to attend and that he has to bring his Sergeant Major."
  "Shit."

  I hadn't received a call though...so I was thinking maybe it was just a meeting between those who had made complaints.  I had written a formal complaint, but I'd never sent it in.  Call it chicken.  Call it not wanting to get involved.  Call it whatever.  Sure enough, a few hours later, I received the call.  They meant business with this meeting.  I called my husband to tell him about it.
  "Too bad.  I can't go," he said brusquely, "I have a Safety Stand Down [safety meeting] - I have to be there and my Sergeant Major has to lead the whole thing so where do you think he's going to be?"
  "Well," I sighed, "Can you just call them...I didn't schedule this meeting.  They called me and used the word 'mandatory'..."
  "Fine."
  He got off the phone with me and then called me back, "They said that if I can't attend, you have to attend...with a Major!"  he was pissed off and he had every right to be.

  The thing that bothers me about this whole thing was the use of the words "Sergeant Major" when they called.  My husband has worked DAMN hard to earn the respect of his peers and his command.  He just got his Sergeant Major to consent to possibly pulling some strings so we could go to North Carolina.  I was starting to get really excited about that prospect...to finally be nearer to home and away from this whole mess.  Now my husband is probably feeling really depressed that he worked so hard and now they are calling his command as if he's been a trouble maker to resolve this issue.  It's absolutely ridiculous.  In the civilian world, you don't call your neighbor's boss because you have a problem with your neighbor.  Military life is so much different.  Whatever you do on base is a reflection of your husband.  You fart on base and someone can call your husband's command and get him into trouble for it.

  For common sense people like me, staying out of trouble on base isn't too hard...but you do have some that have no sense whatsoever and just go and do stupid things like stand out in the middle of the street threatening to kick other neighbor's wives asses, etc.  If you are a Marine and reading this - please do the rest of the military wife community a favor - MARRY WELL.  Don't marry someone you barely know.  Don't marry because you're bored and lonely.  Marry a quality woman with tact and a sense of decency.  Marry someone who is polite and kind above all other things.  Don't subject other women to a chick you just happen to think is a hot piece of tail so you put a ring on her finger.

  In the military wife community, craziness is contagious.  If you have one psycho wife that picks on all the other wives around her, eventually she will turn them all into neurotic, psychotic hose beasts that everyone else will be forced to deal with...and subsequently driven crazy in the process.  This happens because you live on a street with too much drama caused by a few crazy bitches.  The rest of the wives are forced to hole up in their houses to avoid these crazy women...in the process, they become crazy because they have to be holed up in four walls day after day and can't step outside their house for fear of assault by an insane bitch who is armed with an arsenal of insults, rumors of faithlessness to your spouse, and ready to run to your husband's command to do her worst.  There are bullies here just like there are anywhere.  It's a crime to be one...but it's a bigger crime to let one get away with their behavior because after a while, bullies join forces and form cliques.  Their cliques can develop power because then they always have witnesses against you.

  For example, we have a Master Gunnery Sergeant on our street whom we all admire.  He and his wife are great people and they are always ready to dish out advice on military life to us.  We were all out talking to them one night and the group of four wives that are causing the problem all were out sitting on the curb menacing us the best they could.  We ignored them and went on talking.  They started walking laps by us...and they all live at the end of our street so they really had no business on our end.  After we all went inside, about fifteen minutes later, I heard some shouting going on outside.  I went to my front door and there was that group of women standing out by the Master Gun's car and yelling back to him.
  "We ain't doin' NOTHIN' to your car!!!"  it was the same loud-mouthed woman that starts all the problems.

  The yelling eventually quieted down to a discussion.  This woman started telling the Master Guns about what a good person she was and how she works with kids and how the problems on the street all started when all us "new" people moved in.  She went on and on about how she'd been here five years and never experienced anything like this.  It was all a load of crap.  She painted a portrait of herself that was nothing like her actions.  I just sighed and hoped that the Master Guns was smart enough to see through her B.S.  I think he is.  She went on to talk about my neighbors and started saying all kinds of nasty things about them.  She even let it slip that she was going to beat my neighbor's ass one way or another...so yes, I think Master Guns heard all he needed to hear to get a true opinion on what we're dealing with here.

  Now there is a meeting scheduled...and I have a feeling the tampering of the Master Gunnery Sgt's car was the final straw.  I'm sure he went and said something about it.  I hate the fact that my husband's command has to be involved in this, now, however.  He did nothing wrong!  My husband has done nothing but try to make peace with these psychos.  He has absolutely no respect for them because they are getting their husbands into trouble.  They don't care about their husband's careers, they just care about their own neurotic, self-obsessive, bullified grandeur.  It makes me sick that the rest of us are living in so much fear that we hardly come out of our houses these days.  My neighbors don't even use the sidewalk anymore to visit other friends.  They walk through the backyards of other houses, scaring the shit out of my husband and I in the process when we suddenly see someone walk past our back window.

  I'm hoping the commands and leadership can see through the bullshit that will invariably go down at this meeting.  I'm hoping that truth will come out over lies and that the real problem here will be evident.  Far too many times, though, I've seen disputes that were ended by BOTH sides being punished, which I think is a load of shit.  When you have bullies, this is the worst possible way to deal with them.  They will enjoy seeing innocent people punished for THEIR bad behavior.  They live for that kind of thing.  I'm afraid this is what is going to happen...and I'm just waiting with my stomach in knots, hoping that my husband's career won't be too adversely affected and that we won't be evicted because some other women took it upon themselves to threaten and harass us.  There has to be some justice left to be found...and I hope the whole 'punish everyone' tactic will not be played.  I sent an e-mail to the community director telling him my side of the story, detailing EVERYTHING I have seen and heard.  It was long, but it was truthful...and I hope he reads it all and can discern the truth through the lies the other side of things have already spun.  They know that if they just lie enough, the mediator will throw their hands up and decide they don't know which side is telling the truth and they will punish everyone.  That would be an injustice of hideous proportions.

  So Marines...MARRY WELL....and Marine wives, make everyone THINK your husband married well.

  • 7:14 PM
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