My Most Favoritest Teeth Gnash Causing Columnist
…is at it again. This time she’s, well, going on about the ‘rift’ her book (on life as a military wife) ‘created’.
It’s been nearly a year since my book, “Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife,” went on sale. Immediately upon its release, the book had critics, all of them military spouses. I’ve waited this long to respond for a reason.
And her response is right up her peculiarly mis-informed, self-absorbed alley.
It’s the “just make the casserole and smile” mentality, and it breeds two things — discontent and rebellion. As military spouses, we need to get with the times or be left in the dust with the 1950s housewives who smiled and nodded, then threw back the alcohol once the kids were in bed.
Oh, please. I’m sure she got most of those impressions and angry letters from long retired Navy wives, who were appalled by her comportment. If she’d actually bothered to speak to a ‘not-in-her-age-group-nor-hubby’s-chain-o’-command’ military wife from the past few decades, she’d lose that whole stupid ‘Angie Dickinson in Pearl Harbor‘ thread and then what would be left for her to write about? Um…pitiful, witless crap like this, I guess…
Military wives also took issue with my inability to cope on my own. I admit, at barely 25 years old (when the book took place), I was helpless. Haven’t we all been at one time or another? Maybe, maybe not. But here’s what I hope you will remember: there are still so many young military wives struggling the way I was. How can we turn our backs on them by criticizing someone for being honest and real? By being outspoken, I hope I’ve made other women feel free to ask for help, because no two people experience deployments and military life the same way. And no one’s experience should be discounted.
TWENTYFIVE YEARS OLD and HELPLESS??!! Oh, you are so right we took issue with that, since you’re a college educated ADMIRAL’s daughter who is also an OFFICER’S WIFE. “Helpless”, my feckless friend, is reserved for the UN-educated, eighteen year old Lance Corporal’s wife with TWO BABIES and he’s on a year deployment. The pity meter is pegged for you, Sarah. You have every support mechanism in the world to help you, while those poor kids don’t and NEVER have. Maybe if you’d spent less time whining about seemingly self-induced daycare problems and more time helping the younger enlisted spouses find that help, you’d have:
a) gotten answers you needed, too
b) actually done something of service to the military community (granted, you might not have had time for the NYT photo session)
c) have some street cred with ACTIVE DUTY wives like me ( with street cred of their own ) who just think you’re a spoiled dolt.
Perhaps what saddened me most about the reactions from fellow wives was the amount of hostility and close-mindedness. I had always thought military women were progressive and accepting. After all, we endure much and become family when our spouses are away. So it surprised me that compassion came not from the women who share my lifestyle, but from those who do not. And it worries me that, in the end, we are the hardest and least tolerant of our own.
Coincidentally enough, that’s why we also don’t write you letters or show up for book signings…why we roll our eyes when our military husbands mention “Sarah’s column…” (see “c” above) and cringe when we see those fawning presentations in our local fishwrap whence you got your start or, God forbid, on a national stage.
We are just so mean.
Military Thingies | tree hugging sister | 
September 26, 2006 9:54 am
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…threw back the alcohol once the kids were in bed.
The woman’s obviously an idiot; I had daughter trained from an early age to open the beer and bring it to me. Who in their right mind let’s the hired help go to bed before the drinking starts? The other night I had a headache and daughter offered to get me a scotch. Brings a mist to the eyes, it does.
**Let me clarify the Angie Dickinson/Pearl Harbor reference, for the uninformed of Ms. Smiley’s tender, vunerable, HELPLESS circle.
Lord, I recall many military wives who would KILL to be that “helpless”. What a brainless bonzo…she probably Uncle Sugar to give her a personal servant at no cost.