I am receipt of two important notifications from the National Guard; both of which advise me a] to perform a given task; b] that this is my initial notification and; c] that I am seriously past deadline for performing said tasks. They wish the issues addressed immediately.
The first task is to have a military picture taken. Ordinarily no problem. In my case however, it is somewhat inconvenient in that I do not own a uniform. Anybody know a fat Lieutenant Colonel who would let me borrow his? Never mind, I’ll find one.
Now, the purpose of obtaining this picture is so it may be submitted with my dossier to a committee which will probably never meet to evaluate me for an event which will definitely never happen . . . a promotion in rank.
I should here add that, for reasons I cannot fathom, my military attitude is held in low esteem by my ranking superiors. Could it be that I habitually wear a mauve tank-top or blaze orange suspenders with my fatigues? The fact that I have resigned from the National Guard about 18 times in as many years? But these are trivial impediments to the mature mind; nothing here to cast shadow and blight on an otherwise sub-standard performance.
In fact, the only reason I am an officer at all is that after you’ve been in the Guard a certain number of years, they are obligated to promote you – this being a regulation which must gnaw at the very souls of my up-line command.
The other task is to fill out a biography. After 18 years in the guard, they want to know my age and birth date. Thought they ought to have it on file. Appearances, you know.
Would I kindly get that to them immediately, as in yesterday?
‘Immediately’ is an interesting word when it issues from the military mouth in that it has two meanings: now, or in the undefined future.
Now, it turns out that I required some help filling out my bio. For instance: `State the date of origin of your “Ip-Sac 4657” and the termination date of “GJKI-741.” Well, I don’t know those dates, having inexcusably failed to commit them to memory; which complicates the issue somewhat because neither do I know what all those letters mean.
So I call the National Guard, twice; the customer service [guffaw] section. A Master Sergeant Somebody. He was busy, twice; “he will call you back immediately.” Fourteen days later, no ringy-dingys from Sergeant Major Somebody.
So, write this down: in military talk, if you are told for the first time that they want you to do something immediately, you are, by definition, already late and subject to severe reprisals: sword broken over the knee, epaulets unceremoniously ripped from your full dress blouse, publicly drummed out of the corps, etc., etc.
If you want them to do something, immediately means they’ll try to squeeze it in just moments before Judgment day.
Got that?
`Immediately’ might mean a lot of things in the National Guard, but what it very clearly does not mean is, `immediately.’
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