I have realized have a problem with people who use their military ID instead of their driver’s license when I ask for it at work. I have thought about this with my new technique of digging down to the root of the feeling and discovered something interesting.

I’d felt that people who were using their military ID were showing off. I’d felt that they wanted to point out that they had been in the military, like I should be impressed. This is a library. You don’t get a military discount. There is no advantage for using your military ID.

So I dug down. I rooted out the source of it. Where have I felt that someone was using a military ID to get something he wasn’t entitled to?

Then it came to me. My brother. My brother left home to join the Air Force. He tried to leave in the middle of the night but made sure to tell me. He was running away from home and his problems. But I’m not a priest. Confessions don’t stick with me when you are about to do something stupid.

I woke up our parents and they stopped him.

He was talked into waiting until the morning, and when he still wanted to go after a night’s sleep, they drove him to the bus station.

He lasted a year.

He got drug tested after Christmas leave and failed. He had only made it up one rank from when he’d enlisted by then. He was offered two choices. Be demoted back to the beginning, or leave.

He chose to leave.

Yet every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day he posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page in his dress blues. He also had his Air Force training certificates hanging in his office. He was so proud.

He isn’t a veteran, not really. He didn’t serve his full term. He never was sent into combat. He made a mistake and left rather than making it right.

So that is where that resentment comes from.

Serve honorably, and you deserve honor.

Expect honor when you haven’t earned it? Busted.