I wouldn't ever go as far as to say that my response was the correct one. It was dumb and unprofessional, by any standard. The issue I took was that I was minding my own business (clearly too much) walking to my car, and I didn't notice someone in blueberries on the other side of the row of cars, at night, in a place where more than likely, that silhouette of a person given said uniform is someone who I'm not responsible for initiating a salute with (not to mention that we're outside of the normal realm of saluting given our distance/orientation to one another). So when said person goes out of their way to make a big deal out of a simple mistake, and then I realize they are getting angry about something that few if any other LCDR's in my community would, my inner child expresses itself. Not the right answer. The right answer would be to recognize that if they are upset enough about it to force an otherwise physically inconvenient confrontation in an off base establishment after a long friday night, it is probably worth it to give the salute. About that, you have no argument from me. For the record, I can see how the above assumptions would have been made given my previous post. My intent was not to set a poor example for the ENS/JG/wannabe/hopefuls on AW.
