"Rick, let's go to Chik-Fil-A"

"Rick, let's go to Chik-Fil-A"

I had only been at AMS for a couple months when my boss said those words to me. It was my first class as one of the senior training officers and I was going at it full throttle. In the immortal words of Nuke Laloosh, I wanted to announce my presence with authority. Need a decision made, I was your man. Need somebody's butt chewed, I got it. Want to make a random, midstream change to the training, I can do that too. I was the very very definition of dynamic subordinancy. I was saving my boss from having to make virtually any important decisions. In short, I was handling things.

So when the boss man suggested we go to lunch at Chik-Fil-A, I was like SWEET! I love Chik-Fil-A. I mean, when the Bible talks about God providing manna from Heaven I always assumed it was a Chik-Fil-A combo and a piece of cheesecake. And for the commander to suggest we go there, I figured I must be kicking butt and taking names. You see, my commander was not the kind of guy to just take you to lunch. Whenever he would open his wallet, you could always count on two things--dust flying out and him tearing up a little. Seriously, his wallet would creak like a door that hardly ever gets opened. Naturally, I was pretty stoked that I had impressed him enough to take me to lunch. And then it all fell apart.

First off, he didn't pay. A setback but not the end of the world. I just assumed he couldn't get the chastity belt off his wallet. Then we sat down and had some polite, if somewhat forced, conversation. At this point, I still didn't know the commander all that well and had not picked up on his "tells". I did, however, notice that he seemed to be blinking for a long, long time as he shifted the focus to work. Again, odd but who doesn't have some idiosyncracies? Little did I know that that longer the blinks, the worse the news for me. When he finally opened his eyes, he started giving me, as he would phrase it, a stern talking to. He reminded me in no uncertain terms that HE was the commander and quite capable of making his own decisions. He also let me know that the program had survived without me before and could do so again so maybe I should pull it back just a bit. I was pretty stunned but said all the right things while thinking all the wrong ones. The lunch ended and we drove back in relative peace. On a side note, I do remember thinking, I hope he doesn't get mad while he's driving and blink like that. That's gotta be dangerous.

Well, life went on. I toned it down...sorta. Then a few weeks later, he suggested we go to Chik-Fil-A again. When he did, I had that nagging thought in the back of my head, "I wonder if I'm about to get my butt chewed again?" I quickly dismissed it. It's not like I'm in Jerry Maguire and he's taking me to a public place so I can't cause a scene, right? Right? Wrong! It happened again. Lots of blinking and long pauses, more "feedback" for me. Just great.

After that I was like one of Pavlov's dogs. Every time he suggested we go to Chik-Fil-A, I would brace myself. I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until one day my lovely wife suggested we go to Chik-Fil-A for lunch and I absolutely panicked. I started begging her, "Please don't leave me. Whatever it is, I'll change. I swear, I'll be a better husband just give me another chance. PLEASE!" And to this day, I still get a little nervous when someone asks me if I want to go to Chik-Fil-A. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive him for turning my manna into mania.