The Call

I don't know how many of you have ever waited for over a year for a phone call. And how many of you have known that phone call would dictate fairly major aspects of your life for the coming years of your life?

Yesterday I finally got just such a call. Let me set the stage for you.

On a construction site in Big Sky Montana, a dashing and handsome young man is working hard carrying hod. It has been a frustrating morning. He has recently spent two hours performing a task he has performed several times in the past, on two fireplace faces. This is a basic task that has been exactly the same for the past three months on this job-site. His supervisor shows up and our hero gets to undo all that he has done amid belittling remarks that he "should not assume" that things need to be done. Hmmm. Well, our hero had not been told that a new strategy was to be implemented with regards to this task. All he had were prior instructions and an absent supervisor. Our hero chose the better part. But the first rule of hod-carrying is that the hod carrier is always wrong...sooo

Our dashing and tragically oppressed young hero resigns himself to some heavy work to work off some of his frustration. He hoists three ten-foot plank onto his shoulder, and moves deliberately, straining under the wait, to the next place the plank will be needed.

He feels a slight vibration in his hip. It is probably nothing, he thinks.

But then his phone starts to sing. It is a good song; an exciting song. "Fully Alive!!!" wails Lacey Mosely of Fly Leaf.

pause...

That is the song I have assigned to numbers with blocked caller identification...

The Department of Homeland security routinely blocks caller ID!!!

Quickly but gently the plank is set down on a nearby mound of dirt. His phone is opened almost violently, and he croaks..."Hello?!"

"Hi, This is Jill with the Department of Homeland Security, is this Adam?"

Jill...I think I'll name a daughter Jill.....

"yes," he almost whispers.

"How are you feeling today?"

Like I could Leap tall Mexicans with a single bound...

"really good... now." he answers with a little more of his typical manly baritone.

Jill goes on to offer Adam a final and official position as a Federal Law Enforcement Agent with the United States Border Patrol. One of the offers is at a station in Ajo Arizona. After some research into cost of living, housing availability, duty types, church times, and discussing these factors with the two most important people in his life, he calls back and accepts the Ajo Station.

Some interesting things about Ajo. Ajo is the Spanish word for "garlic." It is also the Japanese word for "stupid." However, given the extremely disproportionate ratio of Japanese to Spanish speaking residents in the area, I have reason to believe that Garlic was the original intended meaning...I have yet to hear any reports to the effect that the town stinks horribly(developing).

Ajo has about 4000 people, no hospitals, no movie theatre and no gun shops :(

Ajo has "no crime."

Ajo is extremely Border Patrol Friendly.

Ajo station has some of the more exciting patrol duty types. These include horse patrol, K-9 units, ATV patrol, drug-interdiction units, and ALOT of tracking duty. I can hardly wait.

But I can and must wait. I enter on duty on the 18th of September and will graduate from training on February 2nd.

I will continue to post as much as possible while in the academy but it will not be my top priority. Thanks everyone.