This past weekend Jared and I traveled to Lexington, Virginia to attend his ten year college reunion. Jared is a Virginia Military Institute graduate which makes my little liberal arts college seem like a bunch of hippies sitting around talking about our feelings. Seriously, it’s an insanely impressive experience and I sort of fell in love with my husband all over again.
We’ve visited before and I’ve seen the campus and heard all the stories about rats and dykes and terminology I never knew before. But visiting on reunion weekend was a different experience.
I met his friends (“brother rats”) and heard a whole lot of crazy stories but the thing that they don’t talk about is how the experience shaped them. They don’t talk about it because it doesn’t need to be said. You can see it. I have nothing but the utmost respect for these men. Whether in the military or not, they are strong and disciplined and admirable. It’s just obvious.
On Saturday morning the class of 2003 joked and laughed as the current VMI cadets paraded out of barracks in perfect formation. You could tell they have seen it- and performed it- too many times before but wives stood in awe and snapped photos and toddlers stared in confusion as hundreds of uniformed young men passed by.
I tried to picture my husband and his thirty-something buddies around me as 18-year-old boys in uniform. Did they look to the alumni back then and wonder what their wives and children would be like? Or were they just concerned with when they could eat and who would buy them a beer?
We marched into barracks behind the parade. With the class of 2003 ahead of friends and family, I found a couple of very pregnant wives to walk in with. They joked about how many VMI alumni babies were named Jackson or Robert. I caught up with Jared as the “Old Yells” commenced.
A series of “Ra Ra Ras” echoed out from alumni and current cadets. The sound was booming. Toddlers covered their ears. The crowd dispersed and alumni scattered through barracks with family in tow to find their old rooms. They shouted at rats in the halls to “Get out” which sent the poor dears running down the halls. They were quite entertained by it. And I was too knowing that they probably had the class of 1988 screaming at them 13 years ago. Or whatever the math is.
I know Jared had fun seeing old friends and laughing at their silly stories but I’m pretty sure I got a whole lot more out of this weekend than he did. I always knew my husband was the strongest man I knew but seeing him through these young cadets, I was more in awe than ever. The VMI website states that “the demands of cadet life instill qualities of self-reliance, initiative, perseverance, integrity, and self-discipline in each cadet” and I see those qualities in Jared all the time.
It was a fantastic weekend and I honestly could not be more proud of the man I married.
