Army Wives

Since reading the book Army Wives was based on, I have tried to be a little fairer to the show. Some of the plot lines I thought were outlandish turned out to be based in fact - something I should have realized after my experience in Legal Assistance.

This week's ep had a plotline that at first seemed silly to me, but after more thought I realized that it was not only more true to life but that it was something I was a little familiar with. Denise, the Major's wife who is working as a nurse, has been seen with a doctor and people have begun to spread rumors because her husband is deployed. Now Denise's behavior may be a little inappropriate - driving on the back of the doctor's motorcycle - but thus far its been only a friendship. Now I avoided riding on the back of anyone's motorcycle while my husband was deployed, but I have seen that people hold very specific ideas as to how you should behave while your husband is deployed. The night before I was getting married, in a wedding that was sped along because of my husband's deployment, the Army Chaplain who was marrying us told me to not befriend too many males while my husband was deployed. He said I would be "lonely" and "weakened" by the deployment and being friends with other men would allow the door to be opened to other things that would be inappropriate for a married woman. Having seen the horrors that deployment can do to marriage and knowing that perhaps only the Chaplain sees more than a Legal Assistance attorney, I understood where he was coming from, but I was a little insulted since I had and have no intention of opening the door to anything else. More recently our office had an outing to a baseball game - one ticket was ordered for me and I asked for a second, a friend would be coming along with me. I was asked who was coming with me, my husband was still deployed. I explained another Army Captain, a male Army Captain, who was a good friend, would be coming. I was asked if that was appropriate. In the end I didn't go to the game because I didn't want who I brought to an office event to be a topic of discussion. So people jump to conclusions or get bored and look for gossip or maybe are just jaded from the tales you see in the JAG or the Chaplain's office.

Quickly, the plotline regarding the family care plan, the Army would have allowed her that Soldier to stay home until her care plan was reworked and if she could not have, they would have either delayed her deployment until her husband returned home or allowed her to get out of the Army. They would not have asked the FRG to find somewhere for her to place her daughter. It annoyed me because I worked with Soldiers on their Care Plans - and what happens when they fail - and thats not how it works.

So in this week's tally, I would score one for a realistic plot line and score one for completely outlandish and having nothing to do with Army life.