Via an old #USAF #medic friend: a picture from my much younger days. My head looks weirdly small. Perhaps I was hoping the jolt would blow it back up to normal size.

I can date this one pretty precisely. It's at the #RAF #Upwood #clinic, where I arrived in June 1990, and shaved off the mustache within a few months. Also, I'm wearing whites, which I only did at the Primary Care Clinic, where I was first assigned. In the Acute Care Clinic, where I was from October of that year on, we wore BDUs. So it has to be somewhere in that time frame.

That kid, he's not me. Better in some ways: energy, optimism, idealism, openness to new experiences. Worse in others: temper, stubbornness, a certainty of his own rightness taken to absurd extremes. It takes some growing up to learn the difference between opinion and truth. Uncle Sam was not always pleased with the process.

But I remember him fondly, and wish him well. Given the number of people who were close to him then and are still here now, I guess they do too. I'm glad.