Have You Met My Son?

In the interest of full disclosure, I warn you that this story is a bit of a meandering tangled web but I promise, on my honor, that I will put it all together for you at the end.  Please don’t read ahead.  It will be worth it.

The story you are about to read is true.  None of the names have been changed “to protect the innocent” because with only one exception, there are no “innocents” involved!  

Here we go…

In the early 1980’s, I attended the University of Minnesota on an Army ROTC Scholarship and our “gang” in the ROTC Cadet Battalion was a pretty tight group.  One of the upperclassmen was a real gentleman named Lyle Adams.  Lyle was a soft spoken giant with the build of a competitive swimmer.  You know, kinda like a big Teddy Bear.

He became known as “Lyle Bear.”

Some time in the fall of 1983, Lyle was visited by his girlfriend/fiance, Julia, who was studying nursing at the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minnesota (a little more than an hour drive from the U of M campus).  Anyway, when Julia came down to the cities that weekend, Lyle borrowed my car (A bright green Toyota Celica usually known as the “Screamin’ Green Machine” but sometimes simply as “the toad”).  He offered to pay for using it but I told him just take it and have a nice weekend with Julia.  I was going away for the weekend anyway.

When I returned from my trip, Lyle had already dropped the car off at my apartment and the first thing I noticed was that one of the bolts holding the driver’s seat to the floor was broken, creating a kind of rocking chair effect.  (The next thing I noticed was that the gas tank was full.  Thanks, Lyle Bear!).  I didn’t think much of the damage to the car because it wasn’t surprising.  The car was small (and old) and did I mention that Lyle Bear was large?

By the time I spoke to Lyle Bear again, I had already bought a 25-cent toggle bolt and effected a field expedient repair (which lasted another four years and 60,000 miles) and had pretty much forgotten about it.  Lyle Bear, the gentleman, was wracked with guilt and offered strenuously to pay for the damage.  I told him it was already fixed, didn’t cost anything, and to forget about it.

Flash forward to August of 1984 and Cadet Andersen was attending the US Army Basic Parachutist Course AKA “Airborne School” at Fort Benning, Georgia (Class #41-84) where Lieutenant Lyle Bear and Nurse Julia were now assigned.  On one of the weekends during the course, I had the privilege of babysitting their infant son, Cody, while his parents enjoyed their first date alone since he had been born.  It was an uneventful evening (for me anyway), so much so that I noticed the baby had filled his diaper just as Lyle Bear and Julia were walking through the door so my 21-year-old self was spared the horror of diaper changing duty.

A few days later, Lyle, Julia, and the baby appeared on Fryar Drop zone and Lyle Bear pinned my wings on my chest in the traditional fashion where the uncovered pins are pounded into the jumper’s chest creating what is known as “Blood Wings”.  I remember Julia (the nurse) fretting that I would get an infection and wanting to apply an antibiotic ointment of some kind or another.  

Freshly minted paratroopers are much too manly for that sort of thing….

Talking to Julia and Lyle Bear after the ceremony, in the back of my mind I heard someone on a megaphone calling my roster number.  It seems we had talked too long, I was enjoying it too much, and I hadn’t noticed the passage of time.   The rest of my “stick” was waiting for me to get on the bus to go home.  I ran over to the formation where I was greeted by a Black Hat (instructor) who was only a little irate:

CHARLIE ONE OH SIX JUST WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? WE’VE BEEN CALLING YOU FOR TWENTY MINUTES!  IF THIS IS ANY INDICATION OF THE KIND OF COMMISSIONED OFFICER YOU WILL BECOME…. Blah blah blah…

I did some of the obligatory pushups, offered no excuse and we got on the bus and we all went back to Fort Benning.

After Airborne School, I lost touch with Lyle Bear and Julia and didn’t really hear about them again until around 2005 when our beloved Professor of Military Science, Colonel Dave Pearson called me.  The Colonel (AKA “Uncle Dave” or “Gomez”) had been invited by now Lieutenant Colonel Lyle “Lyle Bear” Adams to speak at his retirement ceremony.

Here’s a word of warning:  If you invite the Colonel to speak at a special event, you should not expect the usual “predictably inspiring remarks.”  

Quite the contrary.  

It’s gonna be a ROAST.

What the Colonel wanted to know was did I have any good humorous stories to tell about Lyle Bear from our time at the University?  Regrettably, all I could contribute was the rather boring story of the broken car seat, which I related much as I have here.

According to witnesses to, and participants in, the retirement Ceremony for Lieutenant Colonel Adams, the broken car seat was was a central theme of Colonel Pearson’s “predictably inspiring remarks.”   Apparently, so was some not-so-subtle speculation about how the car seat came to be broken.

The day after the ceremony during a brunch at the palatial Adams Estate, the Colonel cornered Julia in the kitchen and asked:

“Tell me the truth.  What happened to Carl’s car seat?”

Mrs. Adams’ immediate and truthful reply, in the form of a rhetorical question, revealed not only the historical truth but also how painfully slow your humble author can be to catch on:

“Have you met my son, Cody?”

Thanks for reading.

cma