HOM: And Life Went On

Though at least one friendship didn't survive that crazy and hazy week, the other components of my life mostly survived. Digging in the memory mud, I did unearth two forgotten events. 1. I'd put in for a USFS job that winter and been accepted as a lookout for the summer up in the North Fork. Uncle Pat, that fount of wisdom, tact, & experience, told me I would be an idiot to stick a city girl on on a waterless, non-electric, isolated and inconvenient mountain top. He figured, correctly, the culture shock was going to bad enough even in Kalispell. For a change, I listened to wisdom and made the flying trip home to house & job hunt. 2. A Navy recruiter set up shop in the Student Center, and when I stopped by to chat with him one Friday he talked me into taking the test for OCS. I took the papers upstairs to the test room and ran the old tried-and-true Triple Pass process on it. This was the method a professor advised me to use on tests and it worked pretty well. On the first pass, answer every question you are sure you have the correct answer for. Second pass, answer the questions you THINK you know the answers to. Third pass, make a best-guess at the correct answers on the rest of the questions. His cardinal rule: NEVER change an answer you already put down unless you catch an OBVIOUS error -- first guesses are usually best. I thought it was good advice. I used up less than half of the allotted time, and when I handed the paper back to the recruiter he didn't even glance it, he just dropped it into his briefcase. He'd lost interest in me. Saturday morning I woke up with someone pounding on my door at 0700 . When I ungraciously opened it, the recruiter was standing there. He gave me an apology and a sales pitch. He said he'd assumed I hadn't bothered to finish the test, but when he got home and saw that it was completed he went ahead and scored it. I dunno how many of the tests he gave, but he said mine was the highest score he had seen. I don't know if this was a sales pitch or truth, but I did score quite well -- I have always done well on mulitple choice tests, which has always made me doubt their accuracy & effectiveness. I guess it was either truth or he was desperate for a recruit, because my experience with recruiters was that if they couldn't get done what they needed done in an eight to five day it didn't get done. Ennahow, he was pretty excited, and laid out several paths that were open to me if I signed up. He thought that my previous service record and test scores were a good combination. I was severely tempted, but told him I'd think it over. he pushed a little, but then left me a sheaf of paperwork and his phone number. Two days later I turned it down. I was (and am) quite positive I'd make a lousy officer, but it was tempting. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)