Author as a Plebe (Freshman) with then girlfriend, now wife, in 1985 at the US Naval Academy, probably Parent’s Weekend. Note holding hands was prohibited.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I am a nearly sixty-year-old bald man. I certainly did not consider the possibility as I prepared to be an officer in the US Marine Corps while attending the Naval Academy nearly forty years ago. Back then I did not expect to get a life lesson at the pistol range.
During the summer following sophomore year, we gained exposure to different components of the Naval Service to help influence our preferences about career choices following graduation. We experienced submarines in the Bahamas, naval aviation in Pensacola, Florida, and the Marines at Quantico, VA.
My only memory of that time in Quantico was a moment at the pistol range. Corporal Carpenter supervised our familiarization fire of the Baretta M9, semiautomatic 9mm pistol. He gave crisp and clear commands, undoubtedly repeated hundreds of times, to guide our shooting and to ensure we operated safely.
We fired a sequence of fifty rounds, some slow, some rapid, at varying distances. After the final sequence, Corporal Carpenter bellowed a series of commands:
- Cease Fire! Cease Fire!
- Make your weapon safe. Unload, clear and lock.
- The range is cold. Proceed down range to score and repair your target.
- Shooters, police your brass!
- Shooters, pick up fifty-one pieces of brass and put it into the bucket at the end of the line
He ordered us to pick up fifty-one pieces, one more than we had just shot. If everyone did just one more than necessary, we would have picked up all of our brass and maybe even some that another group had overlooked. In other words, doing a little more than your share is the expectation.
I now mostly apply this lesson to garbage pickup. First, I really try not to litter. However, I cannot help noticing litter while walking around town or out in nature. It takes little effort to pick up garbage that others have left behind. At my gym, some people excel at leaving paper towels in the sauna or on the locker room floor. I regularly pick some up, not all, but more than my share. While I pick up other people’s refuse, I imagine that there is some kind of invisible karmic accounting happening behind the scenes. I like my balance to tilt more toward cleanup than mess making. Guilt
In the professional world, many operate on an informal system of favor trading. In Paulo Coelho’s The Zahir, the protagonist, a famous author, solves problems tapping what he calls the Favor Bank by requesting favors that offset past favors given. Sales and marketing people may know the Favor Bank as reciprocity, a concept from the book Influence that describes people’s natural tendencies to return a favor or concession. While I often grant favors out in the spirit of helping where I can, I can be little cautious about receiving some favors. It is hard to tell how closely people like to balance accounts at the Favor Bank by offering a favor with a future withdrawal in mind. Somewhat regrettably, there are some debts I like to avoid.
Stephen Covey provides a nice take on non-financial accounts in his famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He introduced me to the interpersonal relationship concept of Emotional Bank Accounts. Positive relationships are based on positive emotional balances. Listening empathetically while seeking to understand before being understood is a deposit. Other deposits include kindness, keeping commitments, and taking responsibility. Their opposites are withdrawals.
If you think accounting is difficult at the Favor Bank, try it with emotional bank accounts. For those of you in long term romantic relationships you might note that the value of any deposit or withdrawal varies quite a bit between you and your partner. In addition, these deposits do not exactly accrue interest over time. Example, I think I deserve a medal for cleaning the shower before grimy soap scum accumulation triggers my wife to comment about the need for cleaning. Meanwhile, my wife might not even notice as she does many more daily tasks without complaint or recognition. I should be awarding her many medals. When I say something curt or insensitive, it’s not like it goes unnoticed as small withdrawal against a strong balance of past compliments. Emotional transactions are more valuable in the present. My advice to you (and me!) is to think about emotional transactions in sports terms: “You are only as good as your last game.” Deposit, deposit, deposit.
While Carpenter, Coello, and Covey provide some helpful guidance for life on earth, I recently discovered my new favorite prayer.RunnerUp I refer you to The Prayer for Peace by St Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
The first section inspires difficult Christ like behavior and a commitment to optimism and positivity. It’s the second section that reminds me of that lesson on the pistol range. In this prayer, I can hear Corporal Carpenter say “console people just one more time than you wish to be consoled, take one more loving action than you receive;” and Covey, “seek first to understand then to be understood.”
I am not sure about eternal life. However, if we all do a little more than our share, our families and communities will be better off. We will receive more than we give.
Disclaimers, Footnotes, and Bloopers:
I wrote this myself. My main use of AI was in research. ChatGPT helped most with the pistol range details, about which veterans with better memories may find errors. My only clear memory was about the command to pick up one more piece of brass than we shot. I made up the corporal’s name.
GuiltMy commitment to garbage pickup has some guilt motivation. Several years ago, my son and I stopped for takeout dinner at Tastee Freeze on the way to an Indian Guides meeting. After finishing his meal, he asked what he should do with all his garbage. While I was joking, I must have sounded serious to this five-year-old, when I said, “Toss it out the window,” and he did. At first, I incorrectly got mad at him. Then, I became horrified with myself. Also, there was that time when some high school friends, home from college, sat in a car at the A&P parking lot. We drank beer, talked late into the night, and left a twelve pack or more of empty Miller bottles in the parking lot. It was all well and good until my mom mentioned seeing the big mess the next day. All my random garbage pickup does not seem to erase these debts.
Despite my ongoing debts, I would like lodge the following complaints:
- Smokers: You do not have a God given right to toss your butts wherever you like. I sometimes wish I was bold enough to pick up a disposed butt and return it to the offending smoker as a friend of mine used to do. Evidently, this practice led to some altercations. I am too old to start fistfights over cigarette butts.
- Dog Walkers: If you are going to take the time to pick up your dog’s excrement in a plastic bag, do not leave the plastic bag behind. I used to be consistently shocked to find discarded plastic bags with poop at parks all over the US. Now, it seems like an actual, though misguided, thing. Leaving poop on the trail or kicking it off the trail is one hundred times better than picking it up and discarding the plastic bag near the trail. One’s garbage account should go into immediate foreclosure with this practice.
RunnerUpI was raised in a secular / likely spiritual-not-religious household. My first and lasting memory of prayer was at the Marine Military Academy in South Texas which I attended between high school and the Naval Academy. Our coach, an intimidating retired Drill Instructor and combat veteran, required us to recite The Lord’s Prayer before each football game. I thought it was weird at the time, but that prayer remains a favorite for the following line: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
If you made it this far, Thank You!
Why is Thad Glad? 
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