The United States Army has to be feeling pretty good about itself these days. It's the best-funded military organization on the planet, equipped with the most sophisticated combat technology. Its members are highly trained and deeply committed. And it's just accomplished a disconcertingly swift invasion of Iraq. Riding such a heady swell of unabashed success, what else could a fighting force need?

To hear them tell it, they need me.

At least, that's what I'm led to infer from the fact that I've received two recruiting flyers from the Army in the last three weeks. (More accurately, the same flyer on two separate occasions.) Now, this may come as a shock to all eight of my devoted readers, but I'm not what one usually imagines when one envisions the ideal Army recruit. There's my relatively advanced age, for one. There's my bad knees, for another. Let's not forget the near-sightedness. Or the fact that the gamine on the cover of this month's Cosmo just might be sporting more muscle mass than I do. Actually, let's forget that last one entirely.

The obvious thing to do here is to write this off as the sort of bureaucratic error that pre-approves credit cards to The Guy on the Quaker Oats Carton ("Congratulations, Mr. Carton!") and lists "kitchen appliance" as an ethnicity option on the census. And yet if The X-Files has taught us anything, it's that the government is chock full of devious people who have Big Plans for each and every life-form on the planet. So I'm going to explore the possible reasons the U. S. Army might need a furry, runty graduate student with a concentration in nineteenth-century British poetry among its ranks.

Reason One: They've seen me play board games.
Anyone who's ever been within a five-mile radius while I'm playing chess, checkers, Monopoly, backgammon, Scrabble, dominos, rummy, Phase 10, Cheapass games, Richass games, Sensibly-pricedass games, or solitaire would readily endorse the notion that I'm the most competitive jerk currently drawing breath. That is, everyone except my mother, who tends toward the notion that I might be the most competitive jerk in all of human history. "Even Napoleon wouldn't gloat when he beat a four-year-old at Candyland," my mom would say. To which I would respond, "That's because Napoleon's a freakin' wuss."

This makes me a desirable tactical personnel unit for two reasons. First, my sheer capacity for ill will over trivial setbacks augurs well for the likelihood of transforming me into a one-man killing machine. Additionally, I'm not only a sore loser, but an insufferable winner to boot. The latter in particular appeals to our current administration, as being insufferable in victory is apparently a key tenet of its foreign policy.

Reason Two: They need someone to crawl through narrow vents.
As most strapping recruits are too broad to paw and wriggle through confined spaces, there may be a need for someone my size. This sort of recruiting would have been more plausible during the Cold War, though, and even then it seems the sort of work assigned to a superspy rather than to enlisted personnel. But do you really think that James Bond would take this sort of job? He'd wrinkle his tuxedo, spill his martini, and the echo in the duct would spoil the charm of an atrocious pun delivered in an impeccable British accent. Consider, too, that if 24 has taught us anything, it's that ninety-five percent of the government is deploying military personnel in covert operations against the five percent that's out of the loop because they're too busy having affairs with each other. I mean, Osama bin Laden could probably walk right in to CTU and tear the tag off a pillow with his teeth, and no one would notice because they're all reliving Melrose Place. The point is that someone has to eavesdrop to gain valuable intel, and the best place to do that's in a heating duct, or within earshot of Kim Bauer, and in either case my unconventional physiognomy would be an asset. It's a good thing I watch so much TV.

Reason Three: They need someone to write snide, dismissive reviews of anti-American terrorist videos.
This is the likeliest role I could fill, but let's face it, those sorts of reviews almost write themselves, given the material they have to work with. Besides, I'd feel more than a little conflicted about trashing Bull Durham. It's not like there's any danger of me sending in the business reply post card, anyway. Although I could really use that free t-shirt...