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Hey everyone! I apologize for not posting a “Rats!” comic in the last two months. For those of you who don’t follow my other posts or webcomic, I tore the meniscus cartilage and the ACL in my right knee at the beginning of November during a training camp for Girl Scout volunteers. I had surgery to reconstruct the ACL and repair the meniscus a month later and have been recovering ever since. I can hobble around the house pretty well now, but still need a leg brace and crutches from time to time. And since my office, where I scan in all my webcomics, is up a second flight of stairs from the rest of the house, I have not been in there to work on scanning in the “Rats!” comics ever since I tore my ACL. I’ve been drawing the other webcomic, “The Adventures of Cynical Woman,” on my iPad, which was convenient while I was off my feet, but “Rats!” was drawn on paper back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it had to be scanned in. Now that I finally have the leg strength to get up and down that second flight of steps, I can finally get back to my office to do that.

Anyway, about this week’s episode. When I was a new cadet, every new cadet in my company was expected to take a fall for their buds. I know people took the blame for me when I screwed up, and I think I probably took the blame for others once or twice, though I can’t recall any specific details. The point was, whether or not you were at fault, you were going to be in trouble no matter what. That’s just what it meant to be a new cadet.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a new cadet now, but I remember it was pretty intense when I was in the VTCC. We had a cadet first sergeant who scared the hell out of me, and our XO was almost as bad. I think my squad sergeant had made it his goal in life to make me miserable, and there were a few sophomore cadets whom to this day I still despise for the way they treated me. But I survived it all, and dealing with those people taught me a lot about how to deal with other “difficult” people and scary situations later on in life.

Well, I’ve got to get some more stuff scanned in for another blog post, so I’ll sign off here. But if you were ever a new cadet in the VTCC, let me know what it was like!

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I don’t know what it’s like for female cadets today, but way back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the upper quad…

Eh, actually I don’t know if this ever really was a problem at all. I had very little luck with dating, no matter if I wore the uniform or civvies. I was just not the kind of person who attracted a lot of dates. To this day I’m not quite sure how I caught the Hubster’s eye, but he’s still here twenty-some years later and he’s still happy to see me every day, so I must be doing something right.

But seeing this cartoon today makes me wonder. Do people love a gal in uniform? I did my master’s degree thesis on gender stereotypes and leadership roles in the military. Some of what I found in there suggested that the old roles of seductress, iron maiden, pet and mother still applied. Women had to fit on of these four roles to have a place in the military, otherwise they had no place at all. But a lot of what I found told me that women in the military weren’t running into these gender stereotypes all that often, so I have no conclusive evidence one way or the other on the subject. For my own part, when I was in the military, I was treated like a person, not a stereotype. I did my job to the best of my ability and the people around me treated me with respect. When I was in the Cadet Corps, I was treated as a geek, which I was, and I wasn’t all that popular, but that was no big shock to me because I was seen as a geek in high school and I was treated the same way there too. So, whatever.

If anybody currently in the VTCC, or anybody who was in the VTCC at any time, has any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. Post comments here on the blog or email me. Thanks! Oh, and Happy Halloween!

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Some days you just want to rage at the machine… or, in this case, the Cadet Corps. Go for a jog and blow off the steam that way instead. It’s not worth the stick cards.

By the way, do you guys still do stick cards? I think I still have some tucked away in my closet somewhere.

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This is pretty much how I felt when I was a freshman at Virginia Tech. Me in my uniform, surrounded by all kinds of strange and weird people. Not that I wasn’t strange and weird myself, but these folks were a different kind of strange and weird, you know?