Sunday, January 21, 2007

Quid Pro Quo

Today was a relaxing day, although I spent most of the evening tutoring one of the soldiers in my office in his Algebra course. Remember "completing the square"? Or the quadratic formula? I had to bang it into his head, but I think he finally got it.

I've been helping him out for several weeks, now, and he was asking the other day about getting me a gift certificate or something as way of thanks. I insisted he not spend any money, as it was my job to teach, but today I figured out a great way for him to pay me back. Turns out as my fellow sailors are checking out in Kuwait, they're running into problems turning their weapons in clean enough. And since the only thing most of us know about cleaning an M-16 was learned almost a year ago and we've had little practice since, they're getting them rejected. So I told the soldier to help me clean my weapons when I get ready to go home, and we'd call it even. It's a good trade of expert skills to help each other.

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