I was on the road, meeting the soldier after a 7 hour drive. I was driving state highways through sparsely populated states with no cell phone coverage. I finally emerged from the blackout about 15 minutes from where we were going to meet an dialed him.

“I’m 15 minutes out. Sorry about that, no cell phone.”

“That’s okay, P. Glad you’re okay. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I am waiting for you so we can eat dinner. I’m starving”

I looked down at the pajama pants I was wearing. “Dinner? Okay, but I am in my pajamas.”

“Pajamas?”

“Yeah, pajamas. I decided to drive here in these because it’s cold. No skirt to drive in like normal. Pajamas!”

“Okay. Well then you’re going to want to…”

“No, I said. You’re starving. You don’t have to wait. I can go to dinner in my pajamas. I look good in these,” I said. “I look great, I look grand in pajamas, even coming off the road.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, don’t worry. My pajamas are red and it’s just the pants. I have a normal top so we can go straight to dinner. I’m going to look better than anyone else there anyway, pajamas or otherwise so don’t worry about it. You’re hungry? Then we’ll got straight to dinner and I’ll look terrific. Whet your appetite, I’ll be there in 10.” *click

The soldier talking:

“Yeah, P, my friends are dead. My compatriots, almost all of them are dead. They went to manly man heaven and they left before the big change got here.”

“Change?”

“Well, yeah. Things have changed all right. And now they’re gone and I’m stuck down here with all these metrosexuals.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, I bet they’re laughing too. Probably think I deserve this.”

I roared.

“Well at least someone thinks it’s funny. I don’t think it’s funny. To me, it’s hell on earth. I don’t know what to do. I just wish I could find me a war. Something regular like some fightin’ going on. I want a war, P. Get me a war to fight and then I’ll be happy. I’m supposed to be fightin’ not gettin’ my hair done.”

This is my manicurist. She’s a textbook Sagittarius. I can relate…

“Oh good you wore sandals,” she said. I was back today for a pedicure. I can’t do all this salon stuff in one day. It’s too tedious, “I know how you hate to sit. I’ll just put your sandals on your feet, paint your toes with them on and you can be on your way.”

“And so can you,” I said. ‘I know you like to move as well.”

“I do like to move. I go crazy when I’m cooped up. I’m always having to go somewhere.”

She has 4 kids (3 of them Aries) and a husband she has loved for 16 years. She works piecemeal in between their schedules to help support her family.

“I have just got to get away. So I come here… I leave by myself as much as I can. I tell my kids, you have no idea how much you ask of me. It’s mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. I get so tired of hearing, mommy!”

I laughed.

“So I get out as much as I can. I clean houses for people too, you know. And I tell them, yeah I charge by the hour. But I am in and out just as fast as I can be. I am good and I am thorough, but I can tell you right now I’m going to clean just as fast as I can because the last thing I want is to be cooped up in your house! I want to get done and be on my way.”

“Yep.”

“When I was younger I worked in a bank. I worked in the drive through no less and I hated it. Here I was cooped up in this little booth all day watching all these people out and about. I thought I’d go crazy.”

“Yep. When I was a kid I tended bar. Day bar, always. I am a morning person. And every year the good weather would come and the bar would empty out. People would come in wearing shorts. They would be getting stuff to go rather than coming and staying and I would be stuck inside and madder than hell!”

Do you hate being cooped up?