My Captivity

Having returned from my last deployment, I was looking forward to terminal leave and retirement. I intended this to be a kind of vacation time. You see, I thought that for a week or so, I would get up at the crack of noon, and have breakfast at the Cracker Barrel while the working-stiffs were ordering lunch.

I would walk in unshaven and make a staged stretch and then a yawn and announce a well-rehearsed sarcastic remark about how I just can't seem to wake up if I sleep past ten. I would be deliberately casual about the remaining hours of daylight. I would take my bride and dear children who've missed me so much over the last year on great adventures.

We'd just go "do stuff"; and eat out as many times as we wanted. We'd throw caution to the wind. You want dessert for lunch? Great! Go for it! No-holds-barred. Life is short, and everyone needs a holiday now and then.

At least ONCE I wanted to go back home after eating too much, very-late-breakfast, for a long, undeserved nap. Then I'd get up again around two-thirty and without getting dressed again, I'd lay on the couch and watch daytime television in my skivvies while scratching myself and making judgmental remarks about the lack of intelligence in day-time programming.

But something's wrong:

Now that terminal leave has begun, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt... "She" has other plans. She has ALWAYS had other plans, and never told me! Despite hearing me talk all those times about how little I was going to do for those first few blissful days of fully-paid-unemployment, she never said a word!

The first day, I got up with the 13 month old "little-man" at her request. I didn't necessarily "want" to, I but I thought--hey, fair's fair...so I took him down stairs and we had a good-enough-time I suppose...but he's little and...well, let's just say he's not that into me. He likes the lady who brings the milk.

But it wasn't just that day, though. It's been every...single... day since I've been off!

Oh believe me, he's getting as irritated about it as I am. We're trying to hatch a plot to get back at her, but I can't understand anything the kid says to me! Since the little-man's birth, the older female child has become fluent in baby talk, so I asked her to interpret, but she is suddenly unable (or unwilling) to help me.

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure my sweet little girl has been replaced by a Junior Clone of the "Missus". I don't know when it happened, but it's a very "Stepford Wives" kind of thing. She looks the same, but when she talks, I KNOW something isn't right. The one who used to ask me to take her on a "daddy date" any time we left the house without mommy is now telling me how much everything cost and how bad for my health it is to eat out. If I so much as stop in front of a gumball machine, she logs it into her cute little hard-drive and reports it back to headquarters.

I forgot to mention "Agent Grandma",(who rounds out the tribunal). She appears the sweet-little-grandma who is so happy to be doting over her grand-babies--yeah right! I'm telling you, she's an operator! A regular 007! Her cover is this appearance she puts on--the grey hair, and pleasantly plump mid-fifties appearance; and the scurrying around the house to clean everything in sight and washing a dish as soon as it hits the sink--sure...it sounds good, but she's DEEP UNDER COVER! I know she's been trained by the CIA in mind-reading and remote viewing.

Let's say for a moment that the Missus had heard of Abraham Lincoln and decided to emancipate me from my duties long enough to catch a game before March Madness ends...fantasy, I know, but work with me for the sake of the example. So, I'm watching the game, and I start to get a little hungry, and the thought "Bratwurst" crosses my mind. Immediately, the old Lady's spider senses kick in, and the next thing I know, I'm being hurried off to the table and plopped down in front of a force-feeding consisting of a dandelion-and-spinach-leaf Salad with a dollop of Tuna or Chicken Salad in the middle.

It happens every time! Spooky, right? Sometimes, I'm afraid to eat it, but I'm more afraid not to. It's actually more scary if I ever actually get out of the house without "the Clone". Then I actually can make a break to eat something that was once alive and had to shed blood to end up on my plate. I'm telling you, somehow, the old bat KNOWS!

As soon as I take that first bite, my cell phone rings! I know what you are thinking, but you need to walk a mile in my shoes...there is NO WAY I'm not answering that phone. After my hello, "She" doesn't say "hi" or "how are things? ", no, only "Where are you?".

I've been in the military for 27 years and we have a bit of an invasive leadership style; and I have an uncle who is a retired federal law enforcement agent, so I know that when THAT kind of question is asked in THAT kind of tone, with THAT kind of timing, you are not just answering a question---you are being interrogated and should understand that answering truthfully or not, there WILL be consequences.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, as much as I look forward to breaking away to eat real meat, with real fat, they come at a price. I'm like the POW who is making the best of his captivity. Every now and then I have to oppose my captors--I HAVE to resist...I have to maintain my sense of humanity--even if it means "a week in the hole".