Hammond Tribute Alphabet Soup
My contribution to the Hammond Alphabet soup that sg_fignewton was running over on their Journal.
O is for Ordinary.
It is no secret that when you are a General in the USAF you can rarely pass yourself of as ordinary but I still try.
I don't need to pretend that I don't spend my days and nights' worrying about the men and women under my command, every officer does that, that is ordinary. It's everything else that is extra-ordinary about my command that needs the pretense.
I pretend to other Generals who don't have the security clearance that my command is ordinary. Deep Space Radar Telemetry is about as boring as you can get. Stargate command however is anything but boring.
The people are extra-ordinary; they live day in and day out risking their lives and sometimes their sanity so that those on the outside can continue to live their ordinary lives. The things we've seen and done beneath Cheyenne Mountain most people would simply not be able to believe in the context of their ordinary lives, but I know better, we know better. At the end of our days, however long and troubled they might be, we go home and pretend to live and ordinary life. Most of us go home to friends and families that have no idea what we've done to keep them safe from the threat of the Goa'uld. Others go home to an empty house and for them the ordinary is extra-ordinary, and they come back to their ordinary lives under the mountain where their friends and family reside.
I'm lucky enough to have my children and Grandchildren, who remind me just how special it is to be able to be ordinary for a while. To be able to exist in a time and place where life and death decisions aren't the norm, where I don't have to pretend to be ordinary. I am ordinary.
I can sit with my Grandchildren, have a tea party, build blocks, colour in or just sit in a quiet corner and read.
I can sit with my children and drink coffee, tell stories that embarrass them or reminisce about their mother.
In all the extra-ordinariness of my life they are the place where I can be the most ordinary man in the world...
O is for Opinion.
When you work with the best and brightest in the world you very quickly learn that they should actually be called the stubbornest and most opinionated in the world. However the longer he worked in Stargate command the more aware George Hammond became that these people had every right to be as stubborn and as opinionated as they were because the majority of the time they were not only right but they saved the world.
On more than one occasion he had been required to suspend the ingrained automatic response to berate a subordinate because he realised that the subordinate wasn’t being disrespectful for the sake of being disrespectful the simple matter was that even though as far as the chain of command was concerned he was the senior officer there were some things that he simply wasn’t qualified to have an opinion on.
So he left the Astrophysics to Major Carter, the biology to Dr Fraiser, the anthropology to Dr Jackson, the Goa’uld to Teal’c, and the mechanics to Sgt Siler. And while ultimately the decisions were his General Hammond was well aware that it wasn’t his opinion in these things that mattered.
He would listen to their opinion and take into account their knowledge and expertise in order to make the best decision possible. Even though running Stargate Command on many occasions was like herding cats he knew he had the best, brightest, stubbornest and most opinionated people working with him.
These people saved the world and each other, so as far as he was concerned they could be as opinionated as they wanted to. If the experts couldn’t tell him the truth about the situation then no one would and next time the world might not be saved.
His opinion would never count, but he would make sure theirs always did.
He learned that the hard way.
O is for Ordinary.
It is no secret that when you are a General in the USAF you can rarely pass yourself of as ordinary but I still try.
I don't need to pretend that I don't spend my days and nights' worrying about the men and women under my command, every officer does that, that is ordinary. It's everything else that is extra-ordinary about my command that needs the pretense.
I pretend to other Generals who don't have the security clearance that my command is ordinary. Deep Space Radar Telemetry is about as boring as you can get. Stargate command however is anything but boring.
The people are extra-ordinary; they live day in and day out risking their lives and sometimes their sanity so that those on the outside can continue to live their ordinary lives. The things we've seen and done beneath Cheyenne Mountain most people would simply not be able to believe in the context of their ordinary lives, but I know better, we know better. At the end of our days, however long and troubled they might be, we go home and pretend to live and ordinary life. Most of us go home to friends and families that have no idea what we've done to keep them safe from the threat of the Goa'uld. Others go home to an empty house and for them the ordinary is extra-ordinary, and they come back to their ordinary lives under the mountain where their friends and family reside.
I'm lucky enough to have my children and Grandchildren, who remind me just how special it is to be able to be ordinary for a while. To be able to exist in a time and place where life and death decisions aren't the norm, where I don't have to pretend to be ordinary. I am ordinary.
I can sit with my Grandchildren, have a tea party, build blocks, colour in or just sit in a quiet corner and read.
I can sit with my children and drink coffee, tell stories that embarrass them or reminisce about their mother.
In all the extra-ordinariness of my life they are the place where I can be the most ordinary man in the world...
O is for Opinion.
When you work with the best and brightest in the world you very quickly learn that they should actually be called the stubbornest and most opinionated in the world. However the longer he worked in Stargate command the more aware George Hammond became that these people had every right to be as stubborn and as opinionated as they were because the majority of the time they were not only right but they saved the world.
On more than one occasion he had been required to suspend the ingrained automatic response to berate a subordinate because he realised that the subordinate wasn’t being disrespectful for the sake of being disrespectful the simple matter was that even though as far as the chain of command was concerned he was the senior officer there were some things that he simply wasn’t qualified to have an opinion on.
So he left the Astrophysics to Major Carter, the biology to Dr Fraiser, the anthropology to Dr Jackson, the Goa’uld to Teal’c, and the mechanics to Sgt Siler. And while ultimately the decisions were his General Hammond was well aware that it wasn’t his opinion in these things that mattered.
He would listen to their opinion and take into account their knowledge and expertise in order to make the best decision possible. Even though running Stargate Command on many occasions was like herding cats he knew he had the best, brightest, stubbornest and most opinionated people working with him.
These people saved the world and each other, so as far as he was concerned they could be as opinionated as they wanted to. If the experts couldn’t tell him the truth about the situation then no one would and next time the world might not be saved.
His opinion would never count, but he would make sure theirs always did.
He learned that the hard way.