Sometimes It Just Isn't About You

By Edward Olsen

When things are not going well, we've all had those "why me" moments. Although I never saw battle or real physical danger when I was in the navy, I found myself in a situation, seemingly by fate, that became intolerable. It was a very rough time for me, eventually driving me to mental collapse. At the time I didn't think there might be a purpose to it. I was definitely in the "Why Me!" camp, just trying to survive a bad situation. But there was a purpose to it, not so much for me as it was for someone else.

Sometimes things happens to us; life gets rough, life is a struggle, more so than it seems it ought to be. If you find yourself in a situation like this, consider, perhaps, there might be a purpose to what is happening. You might be teaching someone else. Is there someone unseen looking out for us? All of us? Or…is it all just chance?

Now, looking back I don't think it is all just chance. This is my story about how I learned that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312005457

Book preview

Sometimes It Just Isn't About You

Sometimes it just isn’t about you.

Sometimes misery has a purpose

Edward D. Olsen

Copyright © 2014  Edward D. Olsen

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-312-00545-7

Forward………..

Back when I was in the navy, there was a time that lasted about two years when everything seemed to be going wrong.  I was a young man of about 25 then and had just received an officer’s commission after having been enlisted for about 9 years.

Up to this point in time I had worked hard and applied myself, and what I had been taught all my life seemed to be true. As long as you worked hard and applied yourself, things were going to go well.

But at this point things took a turn for the worse and it seemed no matter what I did, there was just no way to recover.  Hard work and applying myself didn’t seem to matter anymore.  It was as if I suddenly found myself in an upside down world where, nothing worked for me, when in the past it always had.

During this nightmarish time, things were very rough for me but the thought never entered my mind that there might be a purpose to it all.  Not until a few years later when things had dramatically improved, more so than good luck could account for.

Looking back, it wasn’t about me.  Looking back, there was a purpose to it.  Looking back, I was protected and rewarded when the purpose was accomplished.

Sometimes life works out in ways that you never anticipate, usually because there is more to it than just yourself.  Sometimes it is just not about you. 

Chapter One

What Am I doing here?

When I was a young man, like anyone else, there were a lot of things that happened to me that shaped my character.  There were many people I met who probably never realized what a profound effect they had on me because of the simple things I watched them do as they carried on in their daily lives.   Simple things, but simple things are what really define who we are and what we would do when difficulty or opportunity comes our way.

When I was a teenager I worked for a man who owned a fresh produce market.  He was a Japanese fellow and the market he ran was a family business in every sense of the word.  It was called Mit’s Farm Market and Hiroshi, who ran the store, was in business with his brother Harry, who ran all the agricultural aspects.

They grew much of their own produce and sold it right there in the store.  Harry was the guy who grew and harvested all that stuff.  I remember seeing Harry stop by at least once a day to deliver various produce goods from the fields with his crew of two or three guys who only spoke Spanish.  When he came in, he and Mits (that’s what we called Hiroshi) would be over in some area of the store talking about something or other in Japanese.   I might walk past to hear Harry say something to me in English.  Then he might turn to the guys on the field crew and say, Vamonos Muchachos, and off to the truck they would go to get back to the fields.

I remember seeing Mits arrive in his red produce van truck every morning just before eight o’clock.   On week days he would stop at the produce wholesale market to pick up some things he and Harry didn’t grow, like tomatoes and cantaloupes, before arriving at the store.  If I had the morning shift it would be my job to unload the truck while Mits opened the store.

His wife would usually come in at lunchtime so that Mits could have a lunch break and eat the lunch his wife had brought in for him, while she manned the cash register with her two year old daughter, Fay, nearby helping out. 

Mits would usually work until 8:00 PM every night and that was seven days a week.  I don’t remember him ever taking a day off for any reason, the whole time I worked there.   I don’t even remember him taking time off when he was sick!   But then again I actually don’t remember him ever being sick.

Well, I worked there for about two years, then one day I said something to him that didn’t go over well and he fired me. 

Now Mits was a very patient man,  but I was just a kid who really didn’t know the difference between asking and telling, so without getting into the details of what it was about, I think he was fully justified in firing me, but at the time it was a shock. That was the first real job I ever had.  I started working for him just before I turned fourteen.

Later in life when I hit a rough spot and I would think that my job was too hard or too demanding or not worth it, I would reflect back on the work ethic displayed by Mits and his whole family.   It always gave me a bit of additional fortitude to carry on when I would have rathered not.

I would mentally put Mits in my place and try to imagine what he would do if he were here doing my job right now or in my situation right now.   In my imaginings of these situations, he wouldn’t complain.  He would just get on with it and do it. 

This imagery usually helped me to get on with whatever it was I was doing that wasn't going so well.   I would think, I know what he would do, and if he could do it…. well then so can I.  And that usually gave me the extra push to carry on. 

I don’t think Mits ever knew what an impact he had on my life.   He probably thought I was just another dumb kid that he’d hired and hoped I didn’t break too many things.  If he is still living, I bet he would probably be hard pressed to even remember me.

But I certainly remember him and I know he was a positive influence on a lot of the other kids who worked for him as well. Sometimes when we were working in the back room trimming lettuce, we would talk.  Even though we were just kids we saw what he did and how hard he worked and it stayed with us.     

I suppose there are a lot of people who go through life doing the best they can and they think they did no good for anyone, they influenced no one for the better, so their life was meaningless.  I think most of those people are wrong.   Actually most of us have had some kind of influence on others for good or bad whether we realize it or not.  Sometimes we have a life changing influence on someone without realizing we have done it at the time. 

Years Ago, as a young naval officer, I arrived for duty on a minesweeper, the USS Leader, MSO 490.  It was a wooden ship about 175 feet in length with a crew of fifty or so.   She is long gone now, having been cut up for scrap several years ago.

This was my first assignment after graduating from college.  I had gone to the University of Utah, after being selected from a pool of elite candidates who had applied for spot on a kind of paid scholarship program the navy had. 

My previous duty had been an enlisted man in submarines as a nuclear reactor technician, so I thought quite highly of myself.  Nuclear power and submarine qualified, getting a degree in electrical engineering and all of that.  For a young man, not particularly gifted at anything, that was not a bad set of accomplishments.

My family had no money so I had done this all of my own ambition and fortitude.  I was quite proud of myself.  I wasn’t full of myself or obnoxious about it but still, I was feeling good about what I had made of myself thus far in life.

When I reported aboard, I had been married for about two years to the most wonderful girl I could possibly hope for.  Life was good and I thought I was about to embark on something big, having spent all this time preparing.

On my first few days aboard while I was familiarizing myself with my new surroundings and the new job, I was told to report to the captain’s cabin to introduce myself.   I knocked on the door and was invited in, where I found the captain reading over my personnel file.  He was sitting in his big high back chair, turned away from the desk, facing the door, holding the file open in his hands while thoughtfully perusing through it.

After turning a couple of pages over he looked up at me and said, Let’s see here, ....  it says you are nuclear qualified.

I nodded my head politely as he turned his gaze back to the file in his hands.  He turned another few pages over and added, It also says you are submarine qualified.

He looked up again and I nodded politely again, And you were picked up for the NESEP program and you got a degree in electrical engineering as well.

He looked up again and I said, Yes sir that’s correct, with all the humility as I could muster.  After all he was much older than me and I was sure he had a list of accomplishments that would make mine look pretty small, even though I thought I was off to a pretty good start.

He looked down at the file again for a few moments then looked up at me again and said with an obviously condescending tone, So you think you’re pretty smart Huh?

This caught me by surprise and I didn’t know quite what to say.  But I knew I couldn’t just stand there and stare.  That would be a disaster.  I sure didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with my commanding officer, so all I could think of was, Well no sir, and see what happened next.

Well nothing happened next.  He just looked at me with what seemed like a mildly contemptuous glare and said, OK, that will be all.

I knew that was my queue to turn and leave so that’s what I did, while executing the proper military etiquette for departing the captain’s cabin.

As I walked the short hallway, then went down the ladder to the mess decks below, I was confused and somewhat worried because I knew this had not gone well.  When I went up there I was actually hoping to make a good impression, but he basically called me a smart ass and obviously didn’t like me, and all I did was stand in front of him while he was reading my personnel record.

That was not a good way to start out.  This tour of duty was going to last about two years or so and now I wondered if I was in trouble.  But maybe I could grow on him if I did well while I was here.  That was my only hope, but I thought it was a good and realistic hope because I could do well.  After all, I had always done well in the past.

But as time went on and I got more familiar with my surroundings things seemed to only get worse.  The guy I was supposed to relieve was still on board of course and seemed to be something of a spoiled brat sort of fellow.  It was obvious the captain really liked him for some reason.  He was a Citadel graduate you know.  Now I didn’t know what that had to do with anything, but he was always reminding us of that fact.

On this minesweeper I was to have charge of three departments.  They were the weapons, supply and the deck departments.  That might sound like a lot but on a small ship those departments were actually not very big.  There was certainly enough work to keep you very busy but it was manageable.

While I was still orienting myself with the different departments, I got some bad news right away.   I found out the chief petty officer over the deck department was going to retire within about a month or so.  I had always been told that junior officers relied heavily on their chiefs to show them the ropes and to keep them out of trouble while they were learning their jobs, so this was distressing news.

Now I really didn’t know much about the deck department.  I knew they were the ones who took care of painting and mooring the ship and all the outside sort of work there was to do.  That was usually what the deck department did on a normal ship.  On a minesweeper there was an additional duty that had to do with rigging the minesweeping equipment and deploying it out in the water.

This was a very complicated and dangerous job.  I had been to the school that covered it, but I had no experience doing it.  I really needed all the help I could get and there wasn’t going to be very much time before the chief was gone.  Then I would be left on my own.

He did all he could to get me started off right, and we did get underway a couple of times and do the minesweeping thing before he left, but it really was not enough.

I thought I could get one of the other senior deck guys to step in and take over until we could get another chief on board, which actually wasn’t very likely in reality, because this was during the Carter administration and there were shortages of a lot of things including manpower at that time.  But either way, I had to get someone to ramrod things whether we got a new chief or not.

As I began talking to them, I discovered that the two senior guys next in line for the job, were dead even in seniority and that they really hated each other.   On top of that, neither one of them wanted the job.

The Deck Department was the largest on the ship, with the most people, about 15 altogether, and had the greatest workload.  This was not looking good.

The Supply Department wasn’t too bad.  I had a first class and a junior petty officer to cover that job, and they pretty well kept things up to par.  The main concern I had with them was making sure they didn’t mess something up and then have me sign for it without knowing what had just happened.  I knew even less about the supply business than I did about the deck business, so it would have been pretty easy for me to get in trouble if they screwed something up.

The supply chief had this little office back under the fantail.  To get in you had to open a water tight hatch and climb down a vertical ladder.  That was of course where all the paperwork was done, but there was also a bit of extra room for several cabinets and shelves where lots of spare parts and stuff were kept.

I remember we had a budget that was divided into a few different categories, and a whole set of strange rules about how things could be purchased.  We didn’t have the power to go out in town and write checks.  Anything we needed was ordered from the supply system and would be accounted for by deducting that amount of money from the budget category it belonged to on an accounting ledger we kept.

The supply department was actually divided into two main divisions.  There was the regular supply division that I was just talking about and there was the food service division.  This was, as you might expect, the guys who cooked the food and fed the crew.

There was a head cook, who was also a first class petty officer and three or four other guys who worked for him.  The guy in charge was named Edward Andrews, but everyone called him Andy.  He and his guys had a good sized kitchen and chow hall area assigned to them.  We also had a big walk in freezer, another walk in refrigerator and several large store rooms for canned goods, bags of flour, rice and that sort of stuff.

Andy didn’t deal directly with money either, but there was a rather peculiar way the necessary accounting was done.  All the food stuffs on board were treated as if they actually were money.  The crew was allowed to eat a certain amount of money, accounted for as food, every day.  The individual food items were assigned a certain dollar amount per bottle, per pound or however they were generally used.  So it was a kind of balancing act to feed the crew so many dollars’ worth of food every day and not go over the allowed amount.

With this kind of accounting setup, you could serve some cheap stuff sometimes, so that you could save up and feed the crew some really good stuff periodically.

The thing that really killed your budget was when one of the cooks got in the habit of going down to the store room and getting a jar of peanut butter or something like that, and not filling out the proper paperwork.  Doing that was like spending money but not keeping track of it until inventory time.

If a lot of stuff turned up missing at inventory time, for book keeping purposes, it was the same as if a bunch of money had simply gotten lost somewhere, and you could find yourself, in the hole.

But the books had to balance….. somehow.  By regulation you were not allowed to go in the hole.  But generally there was enough money allotted to feed the crew pretty well without going in the hole.

The weapons or gunnery department was the best one of all.  I just had one guy in charge and there was not a lot of activity to keep up with.  But here, extreme accuracy was required because these were weapons and bullets.  Very close scrutiny was expected, much closer than anything else on the ship.

You can imagine the concern if some ammunition disappeared from just a few ships and no one knew where it went.  Because of that