What is all this crap about thinking before you speak? Getting a foot in your mouth, whether it is your own or someone else’s, is never fun. In the military a foot in the mouth is a whole other beast. Remember the article I wrote about military ranks? Yeah, this is right up the same alley.

My husband and I went to dinner with his whole “office”. By office, I mean every officer he works with and their spouses, including the big wigs and their wives. Anyway, so we are at dinner, and the big wigs wife asks if anyone wants to share a bottle of wine, Chardonnay. I don’t know about you, but I’m a traditionalist in that I like white wine with my fish and poultry and red wine with beef. Anyway, that night I was eating prime rib, so I didn’t pipe up. I guess she had no takers, so she yelled across the table, which is rude in itself, and asked me if I wanted to share the bottle. My answer? “No thanks, I’m eating beef.” Everyone was staring at me except for my husband, who at the time happened to drop something under the table. Wimp. The table was silent for just long enough for me to feel like a jackass and then conversation commenced. At the end of dinner, we were all gathered around the bar when four people came up to me and told me I had balls. Balls? Why is it when a woman says something “strong” she has balls? Why isn’t there a saying like, “She has tits of steal”? Wait a minute, I see why: that’s gross. Okay, so balls it is. I had balls, because I was talking to the big wigs wife, but what if I was talking to a wife who was the same rank as my husband? Would it have been different? Maybe?

I’m all for thinking before you speak. Wait, I’m lying because I never think before I speak, but if I had, the correct answer would have been, “No thanks”. Why didn’t I just say that? Because I’m an idiot and I’ve never before existed in a class system where I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say. As a military brat, everyone thought I was just that, a brat. Now that I’m a “wife” I can’t be brat, which sucks because I love the brat side of me. Military wives or not, there is always a time when you stick your foot in it. If I lived in any past time, I would have been burned at the stake.

What’s great is that my boss is the kind of no bullshit woman whom you can be blatantly honest with. She’s wonderful. Sometimes when my colleagues say that they are scared of her I often wonder why. I guess the way I see it, she’s human, and so are you. Why does it matter what station in life you are? There is a difference between respecting people and then respecting yourself. If I knew someone didn’t like something, and this would be because they told me, I wouldn’t do it. There is a fine line between respecting a person’s position and then treating them like a god. No one is better than you, regardless of what they think. We don’t live in the Renaissance era where who your parents decided to have sex with determined your station in life. India Arie, my current “girl power” artist favorite, has this great song where she says, “A woman ain’t what she wears, but what she knows”. All slang aside (“ain’t” is actually a word in the dictionary now), respect should come from within. Respect yourself and others will respect you. And if they don’t, you could always flock them.

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