I had been just doing my thing. I was at work at the cafe at Barnes and Noble when a recruiter walked in with his wife. He wasn’t working, I wasn’t making plans for my future. But it was the right time and the right place for us to run into each other. I didn’t feel pursued, like I had with other recruiters and their tactics for getting middle class kids to enlist. I was in my senior year of high school, tired of high school boys, not ready to decide my future with some college major, and in walked this recruiter.
And his wife. She sold me, not him. She talked about shopping and travel. Her exact words were:
That bitch. She’s complaing that she doesn’t know where she should buy our parents Christmas presents, Australia or Hong Kong. My options are Macy’s or Penneys.
She was talking about her sister who she had talked into joining with her some time ago and who stayed in after she got out, married, and had kids. I’ve been teased about this a lot over the years but that was it. That was the moment that changed my life forever.
It was 1999.Tterrorist was a word I was only vaguely familiar with. 6 years seemed like a small ask to be paid to travel to all kinds of places that someone would want to go. There was romanticism to the way they talked about it all that I just loved.
Don’t get me wrong, I thought about it. I weighed the pros and cons over the next few weeks. I decided on an advantageous job. I did not just get suckered into joining. It seemed like a great thing to do before I get out and settle and have kids and get to have this great past life.
It didn’t exactly work out that way. Life continued to change and though I married and had kids, I would not classify any of it as “settling down”, which is why that is the moment when my life changed. I had never considered those things and it set me on a path no one would have guessed. It wasn’t easy, but, in hindsight, it was exactly right for me.
And it never would have happened without the moment a man walked in to my workplace, in a town I was wishing to get out of, saying romantic things about another life, and completely changed mine.
Okay, his wife changed my life but he had to do the work to make it a change and not just a dreamy thought I had once about this whole other life, so I give him most of the credit.
You can be just there
Waiting,
Not looking for anything
Avoiding entanglement, pursuit
When in walks another
Right place, right time
A few enticing phrases
Romantic but not about you
And your life is forever changed
Heather Stewart Poetry 
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