The View From The Group W Bench

For those of you who don't recognize the allusion (most of you under 30, I suspect), it's from Arlo Guthrie's 17 minute long classic "Alice's Restaurant" - at one point he goes in for his draft board hearing, and gets placed on the Group W bench because he had been arrested and convicted of littering:

• Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!

• And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench.

I frequently find myself wondering what a good little hippie peace-freak like myself is doing working for the US Army Corps of Engineers (I'm good with the Engineers part of it - I speak fluent geek, after all, but the US Army occasionally chafes a bit.)  Especially what the heck I've been doing working for them for almost 26 years now - more than half my life in the same office, even the same phone number.

For the most part, I'm good with it - after all, Portland District is one of the few Corps offices that has a strictly civil works mission.  We keep the harbors and rivers up and down the West Coast navigable, we generate serious amounts of hydropower, we have really awesome parks, we cleaned up after both Mt St Helens and the Exxon Valdez - we do good work, and don't have to shoot anyone to do it (although don't ask me about what we would like to do to the blasted sea lions that keep messing with the salmon at our dams.)  It's a red-headed stepchild of a district, and I've always been Queen of the Weirdos, so we fit well together.

But today.  Today we got yet another reminder memo from our District Commander that even though I've got medical issues that would easily qualify me for medical marijuana, even though recreational marijuana is about to be legal in my state (in two days)...  not for me.  Not until I retire.  Because even though I already take painkillers for my knees that would put the average person to sleep for a couple of days, and work right through it, trying a joint would render me "not moral enough to join the army after committing my special crime..."  Retirement can not come fast enough.