Service: Sometimes, It’s the Little Things…

Laura’s eyes were red.

YHC had just entered the barber shop when she waved him back to her chair. She was young (relatively speaking, mid 30s), petite and not unattractive (having been married for 30 years, YHC is extremely well practiced at NOT calling other women “attractive”). As YHC settled in the chair, she looped the barber’s cape around him and asked, “What are we having done today?” Looking at her puffy eyes, YHC answered with another question: “Are you all right?” Laura looked up and met his gaze in the mirror: “I’m fine,” she replied, smacking her hands down on YHC’s shoulders. She said it in a tone of someone trying to convince themselves of something they knew wasn’t true. YHC — who, as his M will well attest, is hardly what one could call perceptive when it comes to intuiting the moods and emotions of the female of the species — laid his hand on her hand and asked, “Are you sure?” And the dam broke.

For nearly an hour, Laura spoke of her relationship with her husband. It was an abhorrent tale rife with deceit, unfaithfulness, and deviancy. YHC, who had come in looking for a trim (the upper half of YHC’s ears hadn’t seen the light of day for literally decades), sat in the chair and listened as Laura cut and cut and cut, occasionally asking her a question, mostly nodding, here and there saying, “I’m sorry” and “That’s terrible.” Laura never broke down but stopped several times to pause to keep herself together. She spoke of moving back home with her children, of starting anew. This was not the first time she had been betrayed by her husband, but the freshly-revealed depth of his moral decay was so stunning that she had finally made the decision to move on. YHC saluted her for her strength and left her a tip for gas money back home. She gave YHC a hug. YHC looked into her watery eyes and suggested, “Don’t look back.” “I won’t,” she replied. With that, we parted.

Service is our core value for July. Sometimes, service is scheduled; we make a date to perform a conscious act of goodness, e.g., volunteering in soup kitchens or cleaning out the kennels at K9s for Warriors. Other times, the opportunity for service finds us. As we close out July, Dear Reader, YHC humbly asks you to not leave the core value of service behind as we flip the calendar to August. Be on the lookout for the opportunity to serve others. Perhaps it’s a conscious act, like volunteering, or perhaps it’s an opportunity born from serendipity, like helping a senior citizen with her bags at the grocery store or asking a puffy-eyed hairdresser if she’s really okay. Sometimes, the little things in life can have a big impact.

The Warm-Up
* Mosey (with the usual attendant grumblechatter about lack of a warm-up)
* Limp Member
* Dirty Dog
* Hillbilly
* More mosey
* Side Straddle Hops — IN CADENCE — the silent count worked!
* Even more mosey

The Thang
* 210 Bridge Suicides — four street lamp’s worth, with 30 monkey humpers when returning to base (120 total)
* Hip hikes
* Side bridge with leg lift
* One-legged bridges

Warm Down
* Yet even more moseying
* Merkins till exhaustion
* Last bit of moseying

BOM / COT
* Prayers for medical situations of friends and fellow Badlanders
* Prayers for guidance for fathers with teenage daughters (we need all the help we can get)

Always an honor to Q for this great group of guys. Till next time…