I Am Not A Veteran

For reasons I don't understand, I am often mistaken for being a veteran. I am NOT a veteran. I have never tried to imply for any reason under any circumstances that I have ever been in the military. Beyond that, I find the sin of stolen valor to be extremely heinous. I am very grateful to all veterans who have served my country, and they have my deep respect and regard for having done so.

Here I will clarify what my connections to the military are (all civilian stuff that has nothing to do with me providing any service or products to the military of any kind,) to help clarify how much I am not a veteran:

• I grew up in Kitsap County, home of 3 significant naval bases. 
• It is no coincidence that my father was in the Navy and worked as a civilian on one of those bases. As a young child I lived in naval housing in various states.
• Some of my martial arts instruction came from veterans, particularly the very martial version of Aikido I learned from a high ranking active duty Navy captain who's son I was friends with and did martial arts with. I lived with that family for a year on an Airforce base in Ohio when I was a senior in high school.
• I myself have have worked for veteran managers and supervisors, for example when I was pepper spray certified, it included cuffing people while I was pepper sprayed because my boss/certifier had provided that training while he was in the Navy, in some leadership capacity in shore patrol. 
• I have trained or cross trained in half of the full contact martial arts facilities in Kitsap County that have existed from 1988 to the present, and as a result I have been in the ring or on the mat with a wide range of active duty personnel and veterans.

None of that is any special claim to fame or implication that I am somehow specially trained, it is literally nothing unusual for anyone doing martial arts where I live. I also don't want to mislead here, it is true that my security resume ends abruptly in 2012 and I never discuss what I have been doing since as far as that career goes publicly. None of that has anything to do with my relationship to the military.

It might be my hair? I like short haircuts for self defense reasons. It might be because I think lethal force is justified in self defense? That is a common opinion outside of the military in my country. It might be the Punisher logo? I wore that often before I realized it was becoming and anti-BLM symbol. It might be because I am a little old fashioned? That's probably more of an LDS thing, just the way I was raised and the way I try to conduct myself, and which leaves a lot to be desired.

And I will tell you something else here, which is that I don't actually recommend the military to anyone as a career choice, unless it is exactly what they want to do with their lives. If you want to be a military officer, or if you want to run boiler rooms in aircraft carriers, or if you want to gear up in body armor and shoot at bad guys, or you want to be a fighter pilot, then yes, the military is the way to go. But for most people the military is NOT going to take them where they want to go in life, the training is NOT going to translate to civilian life, the mindset will NOT serve you well in civilian life, you will NOT learn good leadership skills for outside of the military, and I could go on and on and on here. I have been actively involved in talking numerous people out of joining the military in the first place, because over all military participation is a very bad deal for most people.

Once upon a time my brother and I, recently graduated from high school, were uselessly loitering about the town, when an army recruiter noticed us and approached us. We told him "not interested" and moved on. He later drove by us in the car and stopped to talk to us out of his window:

Recruiter: "What do you have against joining the Army?"

Me: "I don't like taking orders."

Recruiter: "Is that it, that's all?" 

Me: "I don't like the color green!"