Mountain of Red Tape – An Ode to Military Humor

While I was stationed in Korea at the 5^th Preventive Medicine Unit (PMU), I met my future wife.  Maybe you may remember my story about that experience.  I recall how my wife appeared to me when she walked into the King Club in Itaewon-Dong that one night.  How she was surrounded by this bright white light that seemed to glow.  When I saw that light, it was as if everything else in the world had shut off.  She was all I could see.  At that moment, I knew I was going to marry her.  I don’t know how I knew.  I just knew.  Much later, my wife told me that there was something that she saw that night in me that told her that she would marry me as well.  It was totally weird.  So, we just snapped our fingers, and we were married.  The end.  Yeah.  Nothing ever works that easy.  Oh wait.  There is one thing that works that easy.  The easy button at Staples.  Except, that easy button is a bullshit button.  It doesn’t do anything.  That’s why it works so easy.  Cuz it doesn’t do anything.  But everything else generally has some form or level of hassle built in.  And if you’re in a foreign country, the level of hassle can be measured in degrees.  Not degrees like temperature.  But degrees like college degrees.  You have your standard BS.  That’s bullshit.  Then, for hassles requiring a little bit more effort, you have your MS.  That’s more shit.  Finally, for hassles requiring a colossal amount of effort, you have your PhD.  That’s obviously piled high and deep.  And along with all those hassles, you have red tape.  Lots and lots of red tape.  Of course, I’m talking from my experience back when I went through the process.  Things may be totally streamlined nowadays.  I kinda doubt it because the military just doesn’t change when it comes to certain things and protocols.  The military does, after all, love its red tape.  But things may have changed.  But back when I was in the service, you had to fill a mountain of paper in order to get married to a foreign national.  And that mountain of paper equaled a mountain of red tape.  Hell, I even had to take a week-long class devoted entirely to trying to convince me not to get married to a foreign national.  The whole class was devoted to statistics telling me how many marriages ended up in divorce.  And how quickly those marriages ended up in divorce.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t the only one who had to take those classes.  Every single swinging di… I mean male and female soldiers entertaining the idea of getting married to a foreign national had to take that class.  At the conclusion of that class, a few soldiers invariably backed out of their marriage arrangements with their prospective brides or grooms.  Why?  Cuz those geniuses teaching the classes scared the piss out of them.  Hey.  You throw a bunch of negative numbers at anybody and read them all a horror story right before bedtime, you’re bound to give some of them nightmares.  Sure, as shit.  It seemed like I was running to a marriage broker’s office every couple of days to do two things: to sign more papers and to pay more money (not necessarily in that order).  Mostly I remember the part about paying more money.  Cuz I was the bank.  Isn’t that the way it always is.  The husband is always the banker in this particular monopoly game.  If you ain’t married, you’ll figure that out once you are married.  Finally, it came to the day that all the paperwork was supposed to be done.  My fiancée told me we had three places to go that day.  Well, technically we had four places to go.  The first place we went to was the marriage broker’s office to pick up all of the final paperwork.  The next place we went to was the mayor’s office for the special city of Seoul, Korea.  It seems that we had to get a signature there from somebody in the mayor’s office.  Then, we went to the Seoul City Hall.  I wasn’t really sure why we had to go there.  I gave the people some money.  Of course.  More money.  And we collected some signature stamps on some papers.  Finally, we had to go to the office of the Consulate at the US Embassy.  Some curious things happened along the way.  When we came out of the Seoul City Hall and got into a taxi, the guy asked my fiancée a question and she answered him, after which he started congratulating me profusely.  I thought that was really odd.  What in the hell was this cabbie congratulating me for?  After all, I didn’t know him from Jack.  I should have known.  Cuz as soon as we finished with the paperwork at the office of the Consulate at the US Embassy, the dude there congratulated us too.  When I asked why, he said because I was married.  Surprise, surprise!  I had no clue that you could be married with a stack of paper and money.  Not a clue.  It’s kinda like getting drunk and getting married in Vegas and waking up the next day and finding out that you’re married.  Only it’s different.  There’s no alcohol involved.  And you’re one helluva long way away from Vegas.  Well okay fine.  My wife and I have never counted that as our actual marriage.  But that’s another story.  This just gives you a small taste of the mountain of red tape that I went through that some might think was an exercise in futility just to get married.

by

by