7.19.2009

and behind door number 3...

Most of those who have spent very much time with me know that decisions aren’t my strong suit. Or, more accurately, speedy decisions aren’t my strong suit. I first realized this when I was taking a personality profile for one of my high school classes. I was working on it at home and couldn’t figure out how to answer one of the questions. I went to my mom to see which answer she thought best reflected my personality and, just while talking with her, I changed my mind several times as to what the correct answer--a simple yes or no--was. The question: Do you have a hard time making decisions?

Part of the reason, I think, is some bizarre inner drive for accuracy. Thus, when given surveys that ask questions and require me to circle a number, one through five, in response, I not infrequently end up circling the blank space between two numbers because, darn it, the answer is 3.5, not three and not four, and I can’t just choose a whole number to circle because what if the answer to the next question really is three? Then that throws the whole system off, since I now have a true three and a pseudo three, with no means of differentiating between the two. This of course can wreak havoc on my judicial opinion turnaround time if I let it because, sweet mercy, if I take this long to answer a question as to how satisfied I was with the service at Taco Bell, how much longer am I going to want to take when helping determine whether someone was
unjustly imprisoned?

Point is, I can take a long time to make decisions. Which is why I submitted two assignment preference lists to the JAG, one pre-housing meltdown and one post-housing meltdown, with the post-meltdown list reflecting the altered odds of us purchasing a home at our assignment location. It is also why my wife and I, once we knew she would be on a boat commercial fishing in Alaska at the time I would receive our assignment options, went over the different scenarios prior to her departure so I would know, when give our two options from the Air Force (presumably taken from our previously-made list, which assignment to choose.

Monday, the call came. A nice guy, a major with a southern accent, introduced himself and explained the assignment selection process. Then he said, While we were able to give you your top regional choices, we didn’t have availabilities at any of the bases you listed. Instead, it’s “A” or “B”. Let me know within 48 hours if either of these choices works for you. The 48 hours was expected (actually, 24, so I was practically swimming in time with 48), but I had thought that out of 20+ options, one of our options might have also been one of theirs. It wasn’t.


In the end, we chose an option that, though we hadn’t thought of it before, ended up being quite good (we hope). It was … “A”. We expect you to visit.

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