Category: Cartoon

Ah, nothing makes you feel powerful and important like a brand new rat speaking up and calling you “Sir!” And I was just about always called “Sir!” in spite of the fact that I have been a “Ma’am!” since the day I was born.

Being in charge is both great and really scary, I think. It’s great because you get to make the decisions and call the shots. It’s scary for the same reasons. If your decisions result in a successful outcome, everybody pats you on the back and declares you a hero. If your decisions lead to, shall we say, negative consequences, then you’re pretty much screwed because you were the one in charge.

I have screwed up more times when I was in charge than I care to remember. When I left the Reserves, I breathed a sigh of relief over the fact that my days of being in charge were over. And yes now I find myself once again the one in charge. Of Girl Scout cookies, this time, not of millions of dollars of military equipment and hundreds of people’s lives, but still, I’m in charge and I’m on the hook should anything prevent the successful delivery of several hundred boxes of delicious cookies to our very hungry customers.

The thing is, once you’ve been in charge, you never stop being in charge. Doesn’t matter if you suck at it, you still wind up being in charge again and again and again. Because you have experience, even if it’s only experience at screwing things up.

Have fun this week!

Ah, the terrible things that power does to people. They get a little taste of it and they go crazy, meting out such misery to the poor people stuck beneath them. I don’t recall any of my classmates turn into complete jerks my sophomore year, thankfully. I think we all knew we’d get into major trouble if we pushed things too far. But I have to admit, we were all eager to see someone else go through the agony of being rats, if only so we could point and laugh and say, “Do you remember when we had to do that crap?!”

Other thoughts on today’s cartoon. This reminds me very much of the trips I made from home to Blacksburg and back again. I must have put thousands of miles on my poor little car, driving through all those mountains. I almost always drove by myself, and it’s a wonder I’m alive today. I can’t imagine making that trip now without a full night’s sleep and a cell phone on me in case there was an emergency. But back then? Eh, grab a couple hours of shut eye, through your gear in the back of the car, buy coffee on the way out and just drive! Those were the days.

So this is the start of the cartoons for the second year. I’ll have to count to see if I’ve got 50 cartoons for this year as well. I was in my senior year at this point, had just completed Camp All American at Fort Bragg and gotten through it by the skin of my teeth. I sucked so badly at ROTC, it’s a wonder anyone gave me a commission. That summer was also the year when Iraq invaded Kuwait. I was at Ft. Bragg then, doing CTLT (Cadet Troop Leadership Training) after having finished Camp All American. I remember that one evening we went to bed, everything all sane and normal in the world, and the next day we woke up and we were at war. Scary as all get out, driving around the post, seeing armed guards all over the place. I spent most of my last 2 weeks at Bragg running around getting dental records and helping soldiers fill out family care packages and powers of attorney for the families they were getting ready to leave behind.

Anyway, I did my time at Ft. Bragg, then returned to school. A lot of cadets who’d been upper classmen when I was a rat had already been sent off to Kuwait. It was a strange time to be a senior cadet. Of course, by the time I graduated, got my commission and finished Officer Basic Course, the Gulf War was over. It would be 10 years before I’d end up actually doing anything overseas during a wartime operation. And even then, I didn’t do all that much. That’s the way things work out sometime. To those of you currently serving overseas, I wish you the very best, and I hope you come home safe and sound sometime very soon!

Here it is, the last cartoon from the first year of “Rats!” I did some figuring and I guess 50 cartoons was about all I produced a year. Still, it seems like there should have been more.

While it may be summer in Irwin’s world, it’s absolutely freezing where I’m at, and I’m betting it’s even colder up in Blacksburg. The winter of my rat year is the reason why I finally started to grow my hair long. I had kept it very short up unti that point, Annie Lennox short for those of you old enough to understand the reference. But that first winter was bitterly cold. I swear, I thought my ears were going to fall off it was so bad. Not even ear muffs helped keep my head warm.

So I grew out my hair. By the time I graduated from college, it was all the way down to my back. I didn’t cut it short again until a few months after my second child was born. I had to cut it then because post-partum hormones had turned it all into a freakish tumbleweed perched atop my head. But now I’m growing it long again. I think in another two years, it’ll be back down to the middle of my back.

But enough about my hair. How’s yours? Any freshmen cadets out there wishing they had more hair on their heads? Anyone lose an ear to frostbite yet? I’m ghoulishly curious, I know, but I enjoy hearing about the difficulties new cadets go through every year.

Because it reminds me I don’t have to deal with any of that stuff anymore!

Have a good week 😉

Nothing seems stranger, or perhaps sillier, than a freshman about to become a sophomore. It just seems so unreal to watch a rat become an upper classman. And yes, I include myself in this. I felt ridiculous suddenly being an upper classman. I mean come on! Who are we kidding?! I barely survived being a rat, and now people are telling me I’m ready to lord it over other rats?!

Irwin Ratt is probably the best reflection of me there is. Charlie Brown was Charles Schultz, Irwin was me. Everything he went through, I went through. Yes, Irwin is male and I’m female, but still, he was me and I was him. And many days, I still feel like Irwin Ratt, completely unprepared to deal with whatever life throws at me. Ah well, I’ll bungle through it all somehow.

Next week is the last strip drawn for my freshman year. I keep think there should be more, because the Collegiate Times ran twice a week almost every week between September and May. I’ll have to do some math and see. But I can’t find any more cartoons with that year written on them, so I guess that’s that.

Hope everyone at Tech is having fun. I’m swamped with work but struggling through it. I can’t wait until March. Hopefully by then I’ll be able to catch a break. I’ll do my best to keep up with the comics through it all, but if for some reason I skip a week, my apologies. It’s just that real life does tend to interfere.