Chairborne - A Column by Ben Hofmeister

In an Army surveillance course I took in the spring of 2010, which I wrote about last year, I learned more than just the fact that I had a noticeable limp. For instance, on the first day, we had a class on simple ways to alter your appearance when…

Just before a deployment, all the teams in my military unit received a large supply of medical gear that included two medical backpacks, or aid bags. As the team’s medic, I elected not to bring them, because I already had a bag that I liked, and the new ones looked…

You know what they say about assuming? You don’t? Well, I just assumed that you did, so I guess the joke’s on me. I was going to start this column off by saying that people make a lot of assumptions about the disabled, but now I’m not sure that “assumption”…

When I could still drive, I enjoyed the experience. A car or truck was not just for getting from point A to point B. It was also about the thrill of the journey itself, and I wanted to coax as much as possible from the trip. That meant driving high-performance…

The Army took me to a lot of different places around the world, and if I spent enough time in any one of them, I often found myself adopting local customs. In the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, if circumstances allowed, I usually wore a shemagh, and sometimes…

A friend of mine went hiking alone during the warmer months of early autumn. Before he left, he contacted several of his friends via a group chat and let us know when and where he intended to start and the location where he planned to camp for the night. He…

I don’t know if anyone else’s life works this way, but my life has a soundtrack. It varies depending on my mood and what’s going on at the moment, but at any given time there’s music in my background. These days it’s usually playing on one of the personal assistant…

Thanks in part to 2024 being a leap year, I’ve never published a column on Valentine’s Day. That won’t happen anytime soon, either, as the next time the holiday lands on a Thursday is 2030. While I’ve mentioned this holiday before, I’ve never written a column specifically about Valentine’s Day.

The other day, my kids asked if they could go through the jar of coins on my dresser. It’s been sitting there for a while because, like the majority of people with a jar of loose change, I hardly ever touch it. They hoped to find some rare coins, but…

With three preteen boys and one soon-to-be 50-year-old child in the house, we watch a lot of animated television. On the occasion when we watch another genre, it’s usually a nature show or historical documentary. We recently watched the latter, a documentary on the golden age of piracy in…

After today, I have only one more session of therapy for my current bout with depression. I don’t mean to imply that I’m getting chased out the door, or that more therapy won’t be recommended in the future, just that I’ve come to the end of my current program. I…

I’ve written several times before about how unpleasant it was to catch giardia while serving in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army, but I wasn’t the only person to get sick from drinking contaminated water. On one mission, we’d gotten up far too early to make coffee and had some…

I think cold weather affects me every bit as much as hot does. The difference is that instead of turning into a weak puddle, I stiffen into a rock. It doesn’t get that cold where I live, but when we do have a few chilly days in a row, I…

We’ve begun a brand-new year, and normally that would mean resolutions, but as I’ve said before, I’m not exactly a resolution kind of guy. I don’t have anything against them and I do intend to better myself, but I don’t want the disappointment of failing to meet a stated goal.

For someone like me, who is retired and has three preteen children, the days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s feel like a liminal space. With no school or job to be at and no real schedule to keep, the days seem to run together without anything to orient them.

I’m losing control. I don’t mean that I’m out of control or spiraling in that direction, but I definitely feel like I have a lot less of it these days. That’s a real problem for me because my therapist said that one of the primary issues contributing to my depression…

My wife and I both have medical backgrounds. She is a registered nurse and has actual credentials that have to be renewed periodically. At one time I had a card that said advanced tactical practitioner, but even when it was current, it didn’t count for much outside of…

When I attended the selection process for Army Special Forces, I had a number of obstacles to overcome, among them a psychological evaluation, a handful of physical tests, long-range land navigation, and assessments of problem-solving and time-management skills. I also faced literal obstacles, in the form of a 2-mile course…

As this is published, I’m surrounded by family. Some are cooking with passion and purpose. Some are critiquing and giving advice that always seems to start with the phrase “Now what I like to do is,” going on to suggest a better way of stuffing, or how many minutes per…

Ever since I learned how, I have enjoyed reading. My tastes have changed a little over the years, as has the way I read. I like the feel and smell of a real book, but I mostly use electronic devices these days because I can more easily see them, hold…

About a decade ago, I got caught up in the home brewing craze. I don’t know that I qualified as crazed, but I had a lot of fun with it and felt that since it was probably encoded somewhere in my Hofmeister DNA, I should at least try it. One…

The first time you try something should not be the moment you absolutely need it. During my time in the military, I often applied this concept to both performing a critical task with my nondominant hand and using certain medical equipment. In both cases, the logic of “I’m sure I’ll…

I had a run-in with a nasty, mostly waterborne parasite years ago in Afghanistan. I managed to catch it by, you guessed it, contact with infected water — not by actually drinking it, but by washing my hands off in an irrigation ditch and then sticking them in my mouth.

The company I keep has changed over the past 10 years. I used to associate with people who were much like me. We had a similar way of thinking and faced many of the same challenges in life. I was a part of an upper tier of the U.S. Army,…

My wedding band is made of tungsten and rose gold. It’s heavier than most, but I’ve had it on for 15 years today, so most of the time I don’t notice that it’s there. Every once in a while, however, I glance down at my left hand and am almost…

Due to the nature of my work in U.S. Army Special Operations, or maybe just because of the nature of me, I had a couple psychological evaluations over the years. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly normal — if “normal” means the kind of person who has the right personality for…

I stopped driving nearly five years ago. That was probably six months or more after I should have. By that point, I was doing it mainly by using my truck’s cruise control and occasionally having to use my gradually weakening arms to lift my right foot off the accelerator and…

Migraines are quite an experience. People who have them wish they didn’t. I occasionally do, but I’m hesitant to compare myself with others. I’m even reluctant to use the word “migraine” to describe mine, because while I have many of the symptoms of a migraine, I don’t have any…

I recall one of my college classes from years ago, when the professor covered a subject that was rather difficult to understand. At the end, she paused, looked around the room, and asked if we all understood. We must have had blank expressions on our faces or our heads tilted…

One of the courses I helped teach in between overseas tours was U.S. Army Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat. While urban combat is governed by official doctrine, it is not composed of any definite rules because there are too many variables. Instead, there is a set of guiding…