My 90 year-old father recently wrote up a memoir of his Navy service in WWII, including North Africa, landing British commandos in Italy and partisans in Yugoslavia, the liberation of Marseille, and D-Day. It's a great read, and a wonderful gift to his children, grandchildren, and beyond.

By coincidence, I was just describing an anecdote about WWII service related to the history of psychology in a lecture this morning.

At one time BF Skinner was chairman of my department. One of the promising behaviorists he recruited as an Assistant Professor was Bill Estes. When WWII started, Estes joined the navy, and was sent to a pacific island where absolutely nothing of importance happened for the duration of the war. For some reason, a set of math books had been left at the island, and out of boredom Estes started reading them, even though behaviorists were skeptical of any math beyond arithmetic, because it distanced you from the observed behavior.

Sure enough, Estes learned enough math in three years that when he came back, he rejected Skinnerian behaviorism and set about founding what we now call mathematical or computational psychology.

In his autobiography, Skinner told this story and genially noted that Estes should have been awarded a "Service Related Disability" for what those three years of math books did to derail a very promising career as a behaviorist. They were both distinguished professors in the same department at Harvard by then.

Today, of course, mathematical psychology has far greater influence than the Skinnerian approach in psychological research, if not in the popular imagination. The math books won out.

I skipped my 25th high school reunion (which was this year) because the school made it clear that spouses/families were not welcome for the tours/activities at the school itself; only the alumnae were welcome to attend -- which, what the fuck is that? I think I ranted about it back when it happened. I really wanted Tim to see my school, but if he's not welcome, then I choose not to go also.

My 20th college reunion was last year, and the only people I really wanted to see were not going, so that made my decision easy. Maybe I'll go back for the 25th.

My father's service records were destroyed in a fire that wiped out a lot of the military archives a couple of decades back. I do have confirmation that he was part of the !st Army based out of New York, and I'm so curious as to why he stayed stateside. I don't think he had any ailments that would have kept him out of combat, so maybe he was just that talented as a mechanic that they wanted to keep him for his skills. But they needed mechanics in Europe, too.

And now I feel worse.

I'm sorry!

Horrible pain night last night. And the hospital got cranky and wouldn't finish my meds until someone came to pick me up. W LAistas contacted in the wee hours of the morning.

Unrelatedly, Joan Watson had some great dresses last night. But NY has no winter?

Never been to a reunion. University was too big for me to care, high school was too small and so grouped by five year groups. Also on the other side of the pond, so...

I haven't been to any school reunions. Either the timing was awkward or I was unemployed at the time, but honestly, high school was not exactly my glory days and I recently had to "defriend" somebody I went to high school with on FB because he was going on a racist bender.

I left my small town for a reason.

My high school is turning 100 next year and so they've been spamming me for months trying to get an RSVP for the reunion. NOPE. Not interested even a little bit.

I've just realized that part of mt division's secret Santa gift exchange includes READING OUT LOUD a limerick or haiku we've written about our giftee. I was fully prepared to write something and stick it on the card, but now I have to recalibrate for public performance. DO NOT WANT.

My dad was too young for WWII, (And colourblind, so rejected by the military anyway) but my grandfather served in WWI. He tried to enlist for France, but was still 17, so he ran away to Montreal, lied about his age and enlisted in the Canadian army. He was gassed in a battle a few days after the Somme. We found his enlistment card online a few years ago.

Loving the family stories, folks. None to share on my side of the family, but DH's grandfathers were both military men.

Kat, I might have a t-shirt for you if I can unearth it from amongst the clutter. USC related of course.

Franny was up until 10pm doing homework on Weds, and until 11pm doing even more last night. WTH is it with 6th grade? And she's been such a trooper about it. I just love her to pieces.

My dad was stationed in Germany during Vietnam. He worked in the Army motor pool. On his down time, he bicycled around the countryside visiting castles and eating all of the food. He brought back beer steins that are still in their house somewhere.

I don't have any college t-shirts (any I owned as a student have been lost in one purge or another. And were probably highly inappropriate, really) but now I kinda want to buy some to send to Kat. My various alma maters are probably not getting a lot of representation