Received from a bud…… I always thought I had the easiest job in the world. I didn't sign for the aircraft so, if it broke, I didn't have to buy the taxpayers a new one. Being a RIO was mostly an intellectual pursuit, totally stress free,like playing chess...If, for example, you played chess at 450 knots in the dark below the treetops while tied down inside an aluminum tube that held highly flammable kerosene on either side and directly behind you and maintained two fires to your rear with temperatures high enough to melt lead while carrying three tons of steel and explosives whose whole reason for existence was to go boom quite suddenly (four feet behind a guy who's only apparent positive attribute was 20/20 vision but whose landings have convinced you that his visual acuity was meaningless as it was quite clear he conducted those landings with his eyes closed) while people you've never met tried to throw pieces of burning metal at you and where a wrong move on the chess board meant being shredded, burned, falling for a couple of centuries, and finally becoming part of a noticeable hole in the ground. Other than that, there was no stress at all! The remarkable thing is that we had such faith in our sticks that we played that game of chess again and again. That faith was not a gift, it was earned, by the way. So if you never heard me say it before, to all you poor dumb bastards who only had one anchor on your gold wings, thank you. It was an honor...