patriotic videos

today I watched two different patriotic "homecoming" videos online and both made me ugly cry, hard core. I thought it would make an interesting blog post (from home, for once) with the hope that someone might comment and give me an outsider's perspective on the whole "military homecoming" situation. this is the first one, it's pretty fun actually. although the further it went into the story of the commercial, the more I kept thinking "Charles would be PISSED!!!!! SOOO PISSED!!!!!" so perhaps that can be discussion point #1: any service member worth praising in such a public way is NOT someone who would at all want that to happen or be remotely comfortable with it. decent service members do not wear their uniforms in public unless they have no other choice. they are not show offs and they think of their service as no more than a job just the same as any other 9-5 desk jockey. to be publicly recognized is embarrassing and often frustrating. this is something that Charles is finding as he is now required to be "in the community" for his job while wearing his uniform. we met for lunch a while back and were in chipotle. even choosing a seat is difficult in places like that; how do you watch the door, windows, line of winding people all around the restaurant and also manage to somewhat enjoy a meal? you don't. so you're tense. and possibly jumpy. so when someone comes up behind you from outside of your line of sight and very respectfully grabs your shoulder and expresses heartfelt thanks for your service, even such a gesture as this almost lost some poor guy his arm because he scared the daylights out of my husband. and he has no official combat service. imagine those men and women who have seen and heard the unthinkable and then someone comes up on them unexpectedly. not trying to deter anyone from being thankful, but these are aspects of it that people don't usually think about. so the next video is

Post by Funny Videos.

yea. that one is just 7 minutes of terrible emotional overload. I know what my emotions are at the thought of a military homecoming because I've lived the 12 month wait, the 2 month prior cleaning frenzy, the 2 week prior nausea, the 2 day prior gitters, the 2 hour prior insanity, and that time period when you see them with your eyes, in the flesh, and your stomach is in your throat and you're about to just explode; all followed by the period of adjustment afterwards and all that entails. (side note, did you know that we're told upon first separation with our service member that it will take the same number of days that they were gone for your family to re-acclimate once the return? true story.) getting back into a family rhythm upon return is miserable 65% of the time. even all that "oh I bet you're so happy he's home!" stuff is good for about the first 2 days (at least for us) because after that, we're beyond the mushy stuff and attempting to re-establish real life and it is unimaginably difficult. but that's another rant blog post. so what do you feel when you see those sappy videos? how does it effect you? I imagine that if you don't live near a military community, you probably don't even see anyone in uniform at all, ever. so how does it make you feel? just curious. thanks for playing along.