This takes it too far.

For the first time in the entire nearly a decade I've had some affiliation with the Army, I am SEVERELY disappointed in a senior wife. Severely disappointed. While I may bitch and moan along with the best of them about how stupid the lower-enlisted wives act these days, and roll my eyes with the best of them when the wife of a brand newly promoted Sergeant either still acts like a lower-enlisted wife, or thinks she's now that Sergeant Major of the Army's wife, in practice, I, like most NCO wives, can put that aside in the moment, and for better or worse, mentor these girls who need it. Of course this isn't as easy today as it used to be since now they think you want to be their best buddy, since the Army is now pretending that's socially acceptable, when in reality, you're just trying to do the right thing for them. They have plenty of peers who can be their best buddies.

Someone who is very senior to me has done something massively disappointing and unbecoming in this way. She saw some pictures that a young Sergeant's wife had taken at the homecoming after a deployment which just ended this weekend. This crusty old First Sergeant's wife took to chewing out this Buck Sergeant's wife (ha! I'm a little old-school myself... most people don't say Buck Sergeant anymore...) because she thought the pictures that showed this wife and her husband kissing, sort of recreating the pose in the WWII picture of the sailor and the nurse in Times Square, were highly inappropriate, and went against all decency.

First off, screw you, lady. This girl's husband just got home after being gone for 11 months. She's allowed to kiss him. Even my Drill Sergeant said that it's ok at homecomings and sendoffs, not to mention every military wife etiquette book (of which I own several) states exactly the same thing. (However, they do not condone the phrase, "screw you, lady." Hey, nobody's perfect.) I get that they were trying to recreate that pose, and yes, it looks a little trashy with the way he was grabbing her butt, HOWEVER, calling her out about this in public represents incredibly poor taste. And saying "tisk tisk tisk" to her??? Dude, that made ME want to slap you and it wasn't even directed at me. In my opinion, this senior wife acted far trashier than that picture could ever be by the way she responded to it.

The bigger shame is that she missed a chance to mentor this younger wife, who frankly, might benefit from a little of that. She's kind of mouthy, doesn't care for customs, and just basically your typical young Army wife of today. While I personally didn't have much of a problem with that picture (I would have picked my battles a little wiser than that.) I can understand how someone would, and the appropriate way to deal with that, is to take her aside, and say, "I know that Army regulation states it's ok to kiss your husband in uniform at homecomings, but I think some of the pictures you recently posted online are not very flattering toward the uniform or the Army, and just so you know, the entire command group of this post can see them. Maybe you want to consider keeping those for yourself, and showing more conservative pictures publicly." She would probably tell you to go fuck yourself, because that's what most of the young wives do these days, but even that is an opportunity to mentor. You plant the seeds. You tell her that she represents her husband, and that by reacting that way, she's not representing him very well. You tell her that while we wives have no rank, our husbands do, and that common sense will dictate that everyone should remember that. No, it's not about ratting her out to your husband and having him make her husband's life hell at work, but it is about the general impression of the soldier. A wife does influence that, like it or not, and the only way these newer ones, ESPECIALLY the ones who know nothing about our world, and marry a leader of any level, who really need to learn these things, will learn them, is if we teach it to them.

Those of us who have been around a while need to mentor, not chide. I know how hard it can be sometimes. I see wives do the stupidest things every single day, and then defend their "right" to do them because it's a free country, while in the same breath, insisting they deserve all the privileges of military life. YES, I see the contradiction in that, and I point it out to them. I wait until I get home to scream and throw things because it's so frustrating. I don't tell them how stupid I think they're being, or how trashy they look, or try to publicly humiliate them. When I make a correction, I do it where others are unlikely to hear. Is it always well-received? Oh hell no, not even half the time! One thing that would make sure it would NEVER be well-received would be to do what this senior wife did, and act like an unabashed bitch in a very public way. That wasn't an attempt to mentor. It was an attempt to chastise. That is unacceptable at any rank, and more so the higher you get.

With that said, I know everyone has a bad day once in a while. It's still no excuse for acting like that. When I am having a day where I know I'm going to chew out the first Private's wife in pajamas I run across (don't laugh... it happens a lot. Many people think wearing pajamas to the PX or wherever, is totally acceptable these days.), I simply avoid that situation. Someone will always make an excuse for me, I'm not feeling well, I had conflicting plans, my husband is receiving an award and I've gone to the ceremony, I had an IEP meeting at Erin's school... Someone will cover me if I'm having a "NO BS" kind of day, and decide not to go to whatever it is. I find this effective. If you know you're going to chew someone out while there, simply don't go! That's one of the only great things about the "new Army". They really CAN'T make us do this stuff anymore. Use that to your advantage, and stop embarrassing yourself. If you're having a bad day, and can't put on your game face, stay home.