Pet peeve number one, the big number one, higher than my issues with TriCare (or whatever it's really called nowadays) is - drum roll please.... People who insist that they know more about what my husband does or what's going on where he is than either he or I do.
They are all over the place. And they all want to tell me what I need to do/know/see/realize about the "situation."
I'm not talking about differing opinions, God knows that is fine. And I'm not talking about people who have been there/done that and have some valuable experience to share. I NEED those people. I'm talking about the dreaded "armchair generals."
A long time ago - or what seems like a long time to me, anyway - my husband did a post on my original blog about his time in the Iraq Survey Group. Now, beliefs about the issues in Iraq aside, it quite astounded me how easily people are willing to shout to someone who has actually been doing the job that they "don't know what they are talking about."
This deployment time around, I have been getting it again. People will sometimes ask me what I think, or what hubby thinks, about a situation. When our facts don't line up with theirs (and they are generally non-military types), they jump right in with "their information." Which, of course, is supposed to be somehow more accurate than hubby's.
Let me reiterate - I'm not talking about people with different experiences arguing finer points. I'm talking about the people who seem to think we're morons.
And tools.
And victims. And oppressors. And evil. And misguided.
There are some people, I've noticed, that I just can't talk to. Generally when they open an argument about facts with the phrase, "Well, I saw last night on the Daily Show," I know it's better left alone.
I did get one good jibe in last week, though. And it completely flummoxed the person at the receiving end.
Upon entering a parking lot, I parked next to a woman in a car groaning under the weight of 8000 bumper stickers - which were presumably holding the thing together. Several of them bore the phrase, in many different color schemes and in very eye catching fonts and sizes (some emblazoned with military looking silhouettes), "THOU SHALT NOT KILL."
I brushed past her as I got out of the rental van (without my "airforcewife" sticker, to my vast disappointment) and said, "You know, it's actually 'thou shalt not murder'."
To me, as a military wife with a husband in a war zone- that's a huge difference. It's all the difference in the world.
