College of the Desert had three English Department job openings several weeks ago. I applied once again and, once again, I was rejected with the neutral phrase, "We cannot offer you an interview at this time." They once more suggested that I keep checking with their site for additional openings.
I am not certain anything would change when I suspect that my age is what they really believe bars me from their consideration. I feel I am wasting my time and efforts to keep applying. Filling out their many online forms takes so much time.
While I am slowly recovering from my broken, this latest rejection was just one more disappointment.
So, I continue to watch M*A*S*H episodes, like cuddling with a favorite and familiar stuffed animal as a child. Once BJ and Col. Potter so easily settled in, and then Winchester replaced Burns, the series truly soared for me. Except that Radar did not appear in several episodes without explanation until Season 7 I M*A*S*H actors who are still alive.
In a Christmas episode, at the end, the camera poignantly panned across Stiers, Morgan, Burghoff, Christopher, and Swit, certainly not knowing that in November of 2025, those actors would be gone.
Of course, their fates remind me of my own mortality. Especially with my recovering hand and wrist.
I feel broken. Finding it difficult to see myself back to the person I once was, fully functioning except for the normal frailties of age.
Having watched the two-part episode of M*A*S*H when Gart Burghoff's character of Radar left the series, I realized that the final episode (#5 of Season 8), it was broadcast on Monday, October 15, 1979, my first workday that I was no longer in the Air Force. I forced myself to drive to the unemployment office in Colorado Springs, step inside the front door, and stand inside the noisy lobby until I gathered enough courage to approach one of the clerks to apply for insurance. (Since the AF was required to give me $10K severance pay, I would not be able to collect any money for a few months. But I was able to meet with a rep who would try for months to find me a job.)
I clearly must have identified with Radar who stood alone outside while everyone else had rushed to the OR to attend to the wounded. The Friday before, I had spent the morning taking my possessions to my car. At one point I was stuck between floors in the main elevator, waiting to be rescued, believing that even the building itself did not want me to go.
I closed out my account at the Academy Officer's Club and headed home. I looked at myself in the hall bathroom mirror as I took off mt Air Force uniform for the last time. My neighbor Gina Martin and her mom took me to Black Angus on Academy Blvd. for dinner that night and then my career was over. On Monday night Radar's Army career was over.
