Wishes of a happy Veterans Day to all of the men and women who have protected this great country in past and present. (Lovely wife says thanks too.)

I served in the Navy myself. Eight years as a Hospital Corpsman in the Reserves. A bit over two years of that was spent on active duty.

In the beginning I didn't have a specialty so was basically just a nurse's aide with EMT training. My unit became the foundation for a Mobile Fleet Hospital unit (like M*A*S*H except we didn't have dirt floors) so I was then trained as a Marine. Military logic, don't ask for an explanation please. During Desert Storm I was activated and sent to Oakland (motto: The New Jersey of the west coast) to become an Operating Room Technician. That's the guy who hands the surgeon the sponges and clamps and needles and blades and stuff. After eight years in medicine with some of the most expensive surgical training you could ask for I promptly got into computers.

All of that is a huge non-sequitir to the story I'm going to tell you today: How Jim Ended Up As A Corpsman

Part of the process of joining the military is taking the ASVAB test. That stands for Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery. They put you in a field and shoot cannons at you. If you dodge enough of them they let you join.

I jest. It's actually a fill-in-the-oval test like the SATs and is designed to determine what military billet you could eventually fill. Lots of math and geometry, physics principles, word comprehension, mechanical aptitude stuff, and at least ten or eleven questions that amount to "The answer is A. Darken the oval next to the letter A. No, you dumbass! The one next to that!" Being a math wiz who spent his formative years helping Dad fix cars and planes and only rarely being a dumbass this test was pretty much designed for me to make it my bitch.

And I did. It is an hour-plus timed test. I finished it in fifteen minutes or so and was too bored to double check my answers so I took a nap. My score was in the 98th percentile. Pretty awesome, right? I'd have my pick of billets, right? I could go and do just about anything I wanted to, right?

Of course not. This is the MIL-I-TARY we're talking about here, people. My post-test meeting with my recruiter went something like this:

Recruiter: Congratulations, you got a 98 on the ASVAB!

Me: Wow! That's great! What did I get wrong?

Recruiter: You didn't actually miss anything but they deducted two points for drool on the answer sheet.

Me: Oh. Sorry about that. So what job can I get into?

Recruiter: You've got a great choice here. You can be a Chaplain's Assistant or a Hospital Corpsman.

Me: Hmmm...I'm not really interested in either of those. What else have you got?

Recruiter: Well, that's it. Chaplain's Assistant or Hospital Corpsman.

Me: I scored 98 and I have a choice between only two slots? You're telling me that people have to get a perfect score to get any real choice?

Recruiter: Oh, no! That's not it at all. Quite the opposite. You see, you scored much higher than the expected range for most billets. If you had scored 100 your choice would be even more limited.

Me: You're shitting me.

Recruiter: I shit you not.

Me: Don't you guys have nuclear powered ships?

Recruiter: Yes we do.

Me: And I'm too smart to be a nuke?

Recruiter: Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.

Me: And you've got computers, right?

Recruiter: Yes. Our deployment is extensive and growing at an amazing rate.

Me: But I'm too smart for that?

Recruiter: Yes.

Me: You've got steganography, mathematical coding, encryption and suchlike?

Recruiter: Yes. That's been huge since WWII.

Me: But I'm overqualified?

Recruiter: Essentially, yes.

Me: Okay then. I think I see a pattern here. Just what does a Chaplain's Assistant do?

Recruiter: They help the Chaplains with records and scheduling and such.

Me: I see. And a Hospital Corpsman?

Recruiter: They're the hospital workers. They take care of patients and work closely with nurses.

Me: So my choice is between secretary and candy striper?

Recruiter: Well I wouldn't put it that way...

Me: Yet I'm overqualified for every single advanced technical position?

Recruiter: Um...yeah.

Me: Just out of curiosity, what would I be if I'd gotten a 100?

Recruiter: A recruiter.

Me: Thank God for drool.