Captain Spiers, Tertius, and Me

Long story short, today, I was worried about my reputation in my family for being tough-as-nails. But my dad said something that made me feel immensely better about myself. We're both fans of the TV show Band of Brothers, and he told me I was a lot like Captain Spiers. He referenced a couple of lines from the series:

Spiers: Well, I'd better get back to Battalion before they disappear. You want to ask me, don't you?

Lipton: Ask you what, sir?

Spiers: You want to know if they're true or not... the stories about me. Did you ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there. But then when you ask *that* person, they say *they* heard it from someone who was there. It's nothing new, really. I bet if you went back two thousand years, you'd hear a couple of centurions standing around, yakking about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.

Lipton: Well, maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.

Spiers: Well, maybe that's because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole Roman Legion.

Well, Dad didn't quote them verbatim, of course (I looked up the exact lines), but he said, "Katie, don't you think there's some value to people knowing that about you? You're many things, but no one's ever going to pull one over on you. And if they don't know it yet, they will."

Thanks, Dad. After a day like today, I needed to be reminded of that.