What is worth 20 million dollars...

I just returned back to Boston after my first 2 months at sea. It feels like I’ve been gone so much longer. Pretty much since we left people started counting down the days until we would get back. Everybody has their own way of counting. Most people just go by 28 days and a wakeup, some count by port calls, some by how many more times we have to set special sea detail (pulling in or out of port). As for me... I like to count by laundry days. As an engineer our laundry day is on Wednesday, so halfway through the patrol it was “hey only 5 more laundry days till we’re home!” Just makes it sound that much closer. Everybody looked forward to going home so much, and we were really having some bad luck it almost made me wonder. Is it really worth it?

Is whatever we’re doing out here worth everything I’m missing back home? I missed late nights with my best friends, a pint of ice cream and a couple of spoons. I missed what could have been my Grandmothers last Thanksgiving. I missed hunting season! I missed AJ’s birthday. I missed countless soshal club festivities. I missed being there to hold you and be with you through what could be one of the hardest things in your life. I missed simply being at home! No... floating around out here wasn’t worth missing all that to me.

Two weeks before we started back to Boston we finally hit the jackpot. A go-fast with 20 bails of cocaine... worth about 20 million dollars. After the excitement and previous bust stories had died down I was still just kind of thinking, ok so now what... we got some drugs and because of us some poeple just won’t get their fix for a while longer. What did this really solve? But then I realized I was looking at the wrong end of it. Yes the addicts of the world would find another way to get high, but that was 20 million dollars that the drug lords of Ecuador weren’t getting back. If even a tiny portion of that money was spent on a gun that some tough guy ended up using for a drive by. And maybe in the event that something could have gone wrong, a 3 year old boy drawing on the sidewalk got killed. If my being out here and missing out on 2 months of life could save somebody’s nephew, little boy, or brother.... then yea it’s totally worth it!