Why I hate lower-enlisted rumors.

I swear, the doing away with families being able to formally acknowledge rank has had many bad consequences, but the worst of them has got to be the pervasiveness of lower-enlisted rumors. Having been a lower-enlisted soldier myself once upon a time, I can tell you that lower-enlisted soldiers go on almost nothing but rumors. You don't really get told anything when you're at the bottom of the totem pole, and that's really as it should be, for numerous reasons. To make up for the lack of real information, lower-enlisted soldiers fill the space with rumors. This, of course, translates quickly to their families, and they start telling this stuff to people all over post. "Well, MY husband said that when you've been in the Army for a year, they issue you a sparkly pink unicorn to ride to work!!" to which someone like myself would reply, "Where on earth did he hear that? I can tell you for a fact that the Army does not issue sparkly pink unicorns. Soldiers who have them, bought them out of pocket." Then they argue with you, because THEIR HUSBAND SAID that he was going to get a sparkly pink unicorn issued by unit supply when he reached a year of service next week, By God, and who are you to say otherwise?! If someone such as myself, states the obvious, that our husband, with a couple decades of service to his credit, has never been issued a sparkly pink unicorn, and that there is no such program, according to the entire Command Group, whose staff he is a member of, then that's still grounds for argument that indeed, her husband WILL come home with an Army-issued sparkly pink unicorn next week on his Army anniversary.

Now, why does this matter? Who cares if some PVT's wife is readying a stable for a sparkly pink unicorn that will never come? Well, bad information is pervasive. It gets around and before long, people like me, are hearing this shit from every corner, and these wives who have the bad information are calling people like Thak all day long, irate because their sparkly pink unicorn never arrived, when really, the Army does not issue sparkly pink unicorns, and they've been told so 100 times. Therefore, it detracts from missions involving real concerns, not sparkly pink unicorns.

I wish people would be more honest with themselves about who their husband is, and where he stacks up in the unit. I'm honest with myself about this. Since Thak is well connected enough within the unit, and of such a rank to get into certain important meetings from time to time, I generally get very good and complete information from him. He's never brought me a rumor. We've always known exact dates for absolutely everything, even if it was 15 months away, and been pretty well able to get what we need because we work with real facts. I'm lucky that my husband is in a position to get that for me. However, if a Colonel's wife told me, "Hey, Anna, you're working with some outdated information there. Joe told me that next week, they're changing policy in these ways." I would listen to her, and take that information back to Thak. She has a higher link to information than I have, and I will take anything she'll give me as long as she's not trying to BS me (and some do that. You learn pretty fast how to tell the difference.) I think the best thing any wife can do for herself is really learn where her husband falls in the unit hierarchy, and realize that the distribution of information is not equitable, and for good reason. That way, people like me do not end up discussing things as ridiculous as sparkly pink unicorns with people who probably should know better.