Give Me Some Good News

  Often as not, many jobs are obtained by people you had worked for in the past and developed a friendship.  Such was the case with a Lieutenant Colonel I worked for in the Army.  We had been the not-so-enviable few whose task it was to execute a plan we didn’t write; we couldn’t make others follow; but were ultimately the culprits when things went wrong; the short version is referred to as being the whipping boys. 

  Whipping boy is derived from a practice in the 15^th and 16^th century Europe for monarchies because the idea of divine right of kings stated that Kings were appointed by God; implying that no one but the king was worthy to punish the king’s son for mischievous behavior.  Since the king was rarely around to punish his son when necessary, tutors to the young prince found it extremely difficult to enforce rules or learning.  

Contrary to myth, whipping boys were not street urchins rounded up at the local village.  They were generally of high status, and were educated with the prince from birth.  Because the prince and whipping boy grew up together they usually formed a strong emotional bond, especially since the prince usually did not have playmates as other children would have.  The strong bond between the whipping boy and the prince increased the effectiveness of using the whipping boy as a form of punishment for the prince.  The idea being, the prince seeing his friend beaten for his own transgressions would urge the prince to behave better.  But in our case, we were not so lucky; so it was more a camaraderie forged by shared suffering; the type trench warfare develops life long pals.

 So my Colonel friend from the trenches asked if I were interested in fleshing out a training and operations contract helping to train security personnel in a yet-to-be-named-middle-eastern-country; secrecy is paramount in such negotiations. The good part is, contracts of this type are very lucrative for short periods of time.  The down side being they were also volatile and unpredictable.  I was recently told that the undisclosed country just had a coup and that negotiations were back to initial stages.  My friend and I agreed we lost interest in any employment situation where the boss might suddenly be ‘liberated’ from this worldly plane; as is the custom of that region of the world, so goes his assistants and helpers along with him too.  Then he mentioned another contract was coming available, but was in Somalia.  I crunched my eyebrows and  said, “So-malia…geeh, that’s really the wild west, not sure I’d want my bones bleaching on that frontier”  He said, “You know, I was thinking the same thing myself.  I’m glad you said that because now I don’t have to question if I had suddenly lost my nerve, Thanks Al”

Anyway, that’s my tale for the day, besides giving out a bit of humor with my personal good news.

  In Fostoria, Ohio, thieves broke in and carried off a safe in the office of local organization that serves the poor, (Fostoria Bureau of Concern).  Director Susan Simpkins said that not only was the safe empty but the bureau had decided to junk it awhile back and was looking for someone to haul it away.