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I've been here two decades, I've been open that entire time about my background. Just in the last year someone actually noticed and got their pussy in a wringer about it. I identify when I'm referring to what I've been told by friends because otherwise people claim I'm trying to steal valor by not making it clear it's not MY experiences. In this case, many years ago I was around a Guard SF unit for long enough that some members of the unit didn't realize I wasn't actually in the unit (such as walking down the hall to visit a friend and getting pulled in by the medic for a flu shot), between them sponsoring our Explorer Post and friends I made through that, over six years of association with them. Back in those days, I knew all of the full-time AGR members of that battalion headquarters company by name and they knew me, even though there was primarily one I was hanging out with at the time, but I'd been on a rifle team with another one (who was support staff, he failed the Q Course, I've got a picture of the unit CWO and myself at his funeral a few years ago). So, at that time, I knew lots of SF guys. Since then, I know mostly retired SF guys because there are no SF units in my area, and, as noted, I'm not a veteran and especially not tabbed myself. But I hang out with a former 82nd military science fiction writer, to the point that before my wife was in the picture, his children and his publisher would ask me to go to his house to check on him, now my wife is his personal assistant and does so, and some of his fans I meet are SF, Rangers, SEALs, etc...
So, from that experience, I gave my views and how they differed from those of the person I responded to, who seemed to generalize them all as one body type. So I gave examples of individuals I know who deviated from that body type. Of the three individuals I generally described in my original post, I could pick up the phone and reach two of them tonight, the third one I can never remember his real name and only knew him casually, but I've been there when he was scrounging for food at 10am on an FTX. As for one of the people who responded about "Hey, I'll admit it, we have our fatbodies too", well, I only gave examples of two body types I observed, which certainly wasn't all-inclusive :-) Especially since being Guard, they tended to be a little older than a lot of the active duty types, so some were a little stockier, but still met standards (the main friend in the unit I was hanging out with was older but slim, he'd been Navy in Vietnam, but deployed to northern Iraq to aid the Kurds in GW1).
Heck, some of the same people who bitch about me referring to friends for military stuff also bitch when I refer to friends in computer stuff, even though with them I've talked shop with those friends because their stuff was extremely similar to the stuff I was working on, and in IT you never know when you'll switch specialties to something similar, and that in the same post I was referring to how the stuff *I'VE* worked with was relevant.
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all that typing to say absolutely nothing? but then again when called out you always post some convoluted BS to back up and validate your friends experiences and why your posting about them.