Abnormal Psych Lab

This was originally published on Facebook as a Note on 25 September 2015. A little over three years later, I’m getting around to it as I begin to purge my “For Later” folder.

What started out as one of those days which I could do without experiencing turned into a pretty good conversation with two of my much-respected peers​.

Not too long ago, one of the most interesting leaders I know mentioned adding to the legacy and passing knowledge and wisdom before I go…

It’s not a matter of doing it before I get the coveted DD-214… however, I might be on the right path as far as that is concerned. More importantly – to me – it is more of a matter of reinforcing the right and showing how to use the less than right for educational purposes.

I jokingly have commented many times that we operate in the world’s best abnormal psych lab, and that money and volunteers could never replicate the social, professional, and emotional factors that are associated with what we do. This isn’t to disparage my fellow brothers and sisters in Uniform; it is only to point out a few routinely overlooked aspects of our profession:

• We are all “Type A”. You may disagree, but if you are in aviation by choice, you have – at some point in your career – sought out for something other than a “normal” job in the Army.
• We are all smarter than the average bear. Someone may point out the exceptions to the rule or new polices which quietly replaced the familiar ones, but from what I remember, anything Aviation-related required a GT score of above a 110.
• We are independent. Whether we are front-seaters or back-seaters (“grumpy-assed cabin monkey” has been said, but I think this was a direct reference to myself…), we are the ones solely responsible for being part of a crew. We studied, we got probed, we answered the academic minutiae at 2am, and we volunteered to be part of a small community of smaller crews. While other career paths within the Army may follow similar descriptive paths, the majority of the professions in Uniform are much less lenient when it comes to the individual. (Note: I’m having a real hard time with this point because I can poke holes in it as I type, but the intent is proper and should be fairly understood by the reader)
• We routinely do that which would scare the crap out of most whom haven’t:

“One rotor disk separation on landing… the LZ might be dusty… make sure you shadow the WO1 on the controls… oh, and the illum is going to be 10%, and the moon will be in your eyes when you should be landing…”

On more than one occasion, I have pondered my own mortality in the middle of a mission and contemplated my luck at the successful completion of others.

• We like our rules, but not other ones. Unit patches, haircut and mustaches? Always, maybe and definitely on deployments. Instructors can recite AR 95-1 better than David Koresh could recite the Bible, and crewchiefs know more about the function of everything from the eye to the stabilator. Once you get into any regulation about leaves and passes, evaluation reports, or proper wear of the uniform… we rely on the nearest CSM to provide an interpretive discussion along the lines of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

“Abnormal psych lab” is the result of combining all of these qualities into the aggregate which is Army Aviation. While this is a working and abbreviated list, these points and this lab is what I have worked with and in for the last 19 years, and whatever knowledge and wisdom I have captured from my lab notes, I share and will continue to share until my input becomes irrelevant in the face of changes, irretrievable due to old age, or incoherent due to the inevitable moment of inebriated reminiscence.

Hope exists within the lab. There are people out there who will listen and seek out input from those of us who have words of assistance and guidance. Great minds and even greater potential are out there and very close at times, and all that is needed is words of encouragement for the actions they display and one or two nudges in a direction that solidifies their own confidence and ability.

So, to reaffirm on the statement that I should be “trying to squeeze all the wisdom and knowledge possible… before you go”, yeah… I have. While I may at times feel that the angels of hope may be burning up on re-entry when it comes to the outlook for certain aspects of the career I am soon leaving behind, it doesn’t take too much effort to realize that there’s more up in the sky than that which you see streaking through the atmosphere.

Note: I suck at multi-tasking and writing with distractions. HUGE personal flaw. Just sharing, in case the reader notices a lack of a “flow”. I considered NOT posting, but I have invested too much time to delete it.