Good, Worse, Worst, Better, Best

Pitch black dark, thunder and heavy rain as on Channel 13 Jerry Tabatt shows the red mass over us at the moment, more moving in from the Gulf, another over Dothan moving rapidly south toward us. What a great day, I love a day like this, I love this day. For a lazy bum like me, every day being old and retired is better than any day being young: some poor soul is going to work this morning and it’s not me. Some poor soul is with his carpool driving up Shirley Highway toward the Pentagon. 

Worse yet, no, worst, would be, and was for years, getting up on a lazy, rainy morning like this, driving to work in the rainy traffic, parking and walking to the staff conference room for the admiral’s daily morning meeting.

Come to think of it, worst was worse than that, worst was coming across the quarterdeck just as the word is passed “Now Officers’ Call, Officers’ Call” and heading not to the wardroom for a cup of coffee but to the XO’s daily assembly of department heads for the POD, then to my division officers for the POD then my division officers to their sailors for the POD and finally to the wardroom for coffee, better.

No, by golly, that’s still not worst. Worst was all that happening in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a deploying warship at sea or pierside in Danang harbor and watching the USAF jets bombing in the mountains close by.

The good thing about life is that it wasn’t worst or worse at the time, it was a great life of responsibility, duty and service with shipmates and being young and loving today and looking forward to whatever might come tomorrow. 

Good was sailing on Guantanamo Bay with my buddy Don, a Russian scholar graduate of Harvard who hated the Navy as much as I was loving it, and an iced washtub of Heineken to sustain us.

Better is talking about Navy days with Norm.

Which is best? Life is Good and who knows what’s next! Wait and see.

It’s all good. Today is best. 

TW