Modern Shotgun Wedding - True Story

For the Record (this is a true story) 

I’m in kind-of an odd mood tonight; what I’m about to tell you is 100% the truth, albeit it may seem odd to some.

It is the mid-1980s.

I’m on recruiter duty in Roseville, CA.

Those who know the military will tell you; those who get picked for either recruiter or drill-sergeant duty are the top 5% of their peer group. I had gotten out of drill-sergeant duty just a few months earlier, but I couldn’t get out of recruiter duty.

So off I went. I was in Indianapolis, IN at the time the world series was interrupted by an earthquake. It was only days later that I would be notified that I would be on recruiter duty in my home town of Roseville, CA.

I  was a good non-commissioned officer; my career was on track to be a command sergeant major some day; this assignment screwed everything up in more ways than one.

So there I am, stuck in Recruiter Duty and wanting to be anywhere else.

Doing the best I could.

Along comes Mary.

She had dated the guy in my assignment prior to me, but I didn’t know it at the time. We meet, she was lovely. We dated.

Early in the morning she would show up at my apartment on her way to work or boink my brains out.  For a GI that was great.

And this went on for a few months.

I was really in hog’s heaven. Soon, I started dating her in earnest, this included attending church with her on Sunday where her father was the pastor.

One Sunday, when her father preached the evils of premarital sex she went to the front and “confessed” to God and the entire congregation that she had been having premarital sex with me and that she was pregnant.

So there I was; with no regard to me whatsoever she sucker punched me.

I didn’t know she was pregnant.

The next few days was a fire-storm of nothing more explanatory other than ‘crap’.

Her father called my commander. People actually stopped by the recruiter station (where I was the junior NCO) and asked me what my intentions were.

I got called into the commander’s office and asked how I was going to “fix” this; the only way was to marry the girl.

With the pressure of the community and that of my commanding officer – this is about as close to a modern shotgun wedding as one can get.

She left me just a few years; I should have told the Judge the reasons why I married her in the first place.