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I was asked, in a PM, how, with my family background, I wound up in the Navy, and the short answer is it was because of my family background.

The family used to gather at my paternal grandparents' home in Cape Cod each summer for a couple of weeks, and it used to be a hoot to answer the phone and have someone ask for Colonel Longley, and to respond "Which Colonel Longley?" because there were three of them there.

I also get a kick out of chatting with a couple of the Army vets at work, and surprising them with my "vast storehouse" of trivial Army knowledge.

When my maternal grandfather was hospitalized at West Point during his final year or so, I used to get a kick out of driving his car down to pick him up, wearing my dress blues and dixie cup. A Sergeant at the gate would see the little flag decal on the bumper and snap to attention with a brisk salute, and I would motor on through, waggling my fingers and saying "Hi soldier" never even returning the salute to someone who ranked me by a grade or two.

I did get flagged down by the MPs once, but I produced the paperwork and they drove off just shaking their heads.

I did eventually "attend" West Point by the way, and graduated too, just not the way you would think. NY Telephone Company's training center was, for many years, located at the Thayer Hotel on West Point, and I attended classes there.

bdickens wrote:I like the people who have claimed to have been and done various things in the Army. I just pepper my conversation with those phrases and jargon that only people who have actually been in the Army say and smirk at their confused look.

I was wearing Navy hat at work the other day, Memorial Day, Independance Day, and Veterans' Day are the days that I can get away with wearing a hat, because it is a Navy hat. I had a guy come up to me and start about his experience in the "3rd Infantry" and I got the impression that he was giving me some kind of line because obviously a squid couldn't know anything about the Army. So I asked what the nickname of the 3rd was, and his story started to change. Pretty soon he was saying I misunderstood, he was with 3rd Army, not 3rd Inf, and that one is even easier for me, so I asked again, what their nickname was, and what was their shoulder patch.

I was an Army brat, my father, grandfather, and uncle were all colonels, and my other grandfather was a brigadier general, and that's just those two generations. Various relatives served in "The Rock of the Marne" and "Patton's Own" and I could identify division and army shoulder patches when I was a kid.

The guy was a little miffed when he found an excuse to break off the conversation, and I still think he was a poser, I just hate to think that Home Depot lost a customer over it.

TxRVer wrote:So, if the guy removes his hands from his pocket is he guilty of brandishing a lethal weapon? Is it legal to shoot him at that point?

Yup, force continuum.

More than 40 years ago, while I was in the Navy, this "my hands are registered lethal weapons" repeated often. I think it came from some movie or tv line or other, Twilight Zone maybe, and even back then I used to ask, "Really, with which jurisdiction?" and then they would usually tell me it was a federal law, and then I would ask for the specific code, etc. I always ended with the fact that a .45 in my fist was probably better then their empty fist.

A few years after I got out of the Navy I became better prepared for such things. A young guy was posturing for fellow workers in the garage. He had some martial arts experience because he had the moves down pretty well, but then he made the "Registered Lethal Weapons" claim, and when asked he stated it was a NY law, at which point I whipped out my copy of a new publication that I was using in my pistol and rifle classes, Looseleaf Law, which included a copy of NY's entire penal and criminal code at the time and asked him which section he was referring to. He couldn't provide one and try as anyone might, nobody could find such a provision in the state law.

We never got along after that.

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