Days of Youth

Argentia, Newfoundland, c. 1982 USN foto by Gil

This picture showed up on social media today and I have to say I was Mesmerized looking at it.

First... or maybe not first, but I'm amazed at how much I look like my son - or rather how much he looks like me. I am younger in this pic than he is now. And maybe that's number two; I'm at a point where, although I can still remember being that young, it's hard to believe.

So - there are too many thoughts going through my brain right now to get them all down on the screen. I'm feeling something that could be called nostalgia, but somehow, that's not quite it. I just want to gaze at this pic and try to put a time to; to put a feeling around it.

Since "Shilbert" posted it, I can presume he took it. He was one of the first five people I became friends with when I was posted at the Naval Facility. As would become a practice with me long into the future, the people I became best friends with, weren't the people I worked with. I think it was based on ethnicity, initially - I was identified as Hispanic. But also there was a geographical element as well... there was a circle of us, all from East Coast cities that hung out; Philly, New York City, Brooklyn, Boston... we used to compare which city was tougher. Gil was from Fresno and we made the Cali connect as I'd lived in San Diego just before I enlisted.

So I fell in with this crowd... and as some people shipped out, others came aboard and we gelled into this funky family. It's very different, the friends you make and keep in the military as opposed to University... or so I think... I haven't spent enough time in school to know, and the school I did attend was post-military so I was 5 - 6 years older than my classmates. 

I think the time of our lives had something to do with it also, and the types of people we were - not just anybody enlists in the Navy... especially in the post-Vietnam era... anyway, I'm over-thinking now, just letting my mind wander.

This will do.
Thanks Gil.