Getting notified

Feb 27, 2013

Things were going good in my life... a good family, home and job. This happened to be my first son's birthday. We had just met with a pool construction owner to talk about the possibility of putting a pool in our backyard since it tends to get hot here in the summer time. So we had a good idea of what we wanted the pool to look like and it looked like we would probably go forward with putting a pool in.

Then it came... the call... the mobilization officer from my Navy Operational Support Center (NOSC) in Los Angeles called. He flat out told me that I was getting mobilized. My first reaction was "you've got to be kidding me"... it was one of shock. He proceeded to give me some details on what I needed to do and where I was going, other than that there wasn't any real details on what I would be doing as my orders weren't loaded into the system yet. When he told me the location I thought about an email I had read about a month ago advertising a MOB opportunity for someone of my rate and rank to the location named for 330 days boots on the ground (BOG) as an armory LCPO. Immediately I thought this is the billet I am getting... they advertised and no one rogered up for it so they went to the ready mob pool (RMP) list to pick someone to fill the slot to go. Yes, I was on that RMP list... I was on it two years ago and dodged the bullet meaning I didn't get selected to MOB then. Since I didn't get called then you get a one year deferment from the list and wouldn't you know when the list for year came out I was back on it and I knew then that I was probably going to get picked to go... so they got me.

After the call I told my wife I was getting MOB'd and she about started into tears. My wife is a strong woman but she had never been a Navy wife per se. She had never experienced the 6 month deployments that regular Sailors go on routinely, so this was going to be a new thing for her... being away from me for a long period of time. The most time spent away from each other to this point was about 3 weeks which was for the Navy while I was doing one of my Annual Trainings (AT).

I didn't make a Facebook status update or anything but I did inform my mom that I was getting mobilized and my wife told her mom too.