Armed and Unintimidating

The Army loves air conditioning.  Correction: the Army National Guard loves air conditioning (God knows they’re not the same thing).  This fact was blatantly clear as I was sitting in that tiny office, shivering in my cargo shorts and flip flops and “got milk?” t-shirt (I later found out the shirt was actually talking about milk, while I was thinking it meant something else completely).  My drama teacher’s husband, who I suppose I can refer to as my recruiter now, was going to get copies of my learner’s permit and a voided check while I stared outside at the sunshine and flowers and bunnies, trapped in this industrial office which looked like Uncle Sam had a bout of diarrhea here.

The funniest joke I ever told my parents was apparently “Do I have a college savings fund?”  My mom laughed so hard I was glad she already started wearing adult diapers for what she explained to me were “heavy flows”.  Go ahead, gag, I know I did.

So I decided to join the Army National Guard.  Get paid, lots of benefits, blah, blah, blah.  And you can’t help but feel flattered when you walk into the office and say “I would like to join” because suddenly the recruiter pulls out a kazoo, plays a few bars of the National Anthem, shakes your hand vigorously and says “You’ve made your country proud”.  Blushing, I respond, “Gee, where do I sign?”

The ASVAB wasn’t that bad.  I realized about halfway through that i
t was designed so that even Helen Keller could get into the Armed Forces if she really wanted, although I personally think she would be better suited as a drug sniffing dog on the LAPD.

He came back with all my documents, and explained that based on my scores I was qualified to do anything the Army National Guard had to offer.  There were lots of smiles and handshakes, and then my mother (did I mention my mother was there?) offered my recruiter some lunch since we were going to her favorite Chinese buffet.  Yes, my mom has a favorite Chinese buffet.  All You Can Eat.  Of course.

It was a happy time: my recruiter had a recruit, my mom had a son with a job right out of high school, and I had General Tso’s in my belly.  Damn good time.

I went to Fort Lee and was put to the test, being poked and prodded in ways I thought were a little inappropriate for the United States Armed Forces: “I’m not going to ask, you’re not going to tell, just bend over and spread your cheeks…”  I passed with flying colors, and my duck walk was by far the best, because I noticed no one else even bothered to give their duck a sashay.

Raised my hand, said an oath called it a day.

I can not tell you how severely disappointed I was on the first weekend that I was a “Weekend Warrior”.  Not an overabundance (or even an abundance) of attractive guys in the Army National Guard.  There was maybe one, possibly two that were in shape and fit, the type that were on the football team in high school, but most ranged from wiry, tall, lanky guys (me) to John Belushi.  Of course, it wasn’t a condition of me joining or anything but I thought it would be a nice bonus.

So that first weekend, I walk in, chit chat with people, and then everybody snaps to attention as two men approaching mid-life crisis walk in the room.  “Today we are going to learn how to not get lost.”  I cracked open a notebook and had my pen poised and ready to write, because I was positive if three people and I were lost in a desert, my body’s going to be the one set on fire to send smoke signals.  That is, unless I learn to use a compass.

Lunch time rolls around and they start passing out these MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat).  Let me just say, not so ready to eat and also, not so easy to cook.  My eyes are darting around trying to figure out how to prepare this “Cajun Rice and Beans” concoction.  It involved water, sunshine, and a lot more patience than I felt it was worth.  And people around me are trading them like baseball cards (or how I imagine people trade baseball cards).  “I got peanuts!”  “Oh!  Give me those, I love those!”
I will tell you right now, if it’s in an MRE bag, chances are it tastes very similar to shit.  If you love the taste of shit, you will love MREs.

We stayed overnight which meant there were cots set up in the gymnasium of this training facility, and a lucky eight folks got “fire guard” which meant you walked around for an hour making sure no one started a fire and which spreads throughout the building and causes us all to die a horrific death.  I thought it was unlikely, but what do I know.  And guess whose job 3-4 AM was?

I am a heavy sleeper.  I told the private on fire guard before me it will take an elbow to the ribs and a possible crotch shot to wake me up.  I drifted off to sleep somehow in the drafty, eerily lit gymnasium on my painful, scoliosis inducing cot.  Next thing I know a sting shoots up from my crotch to my head, causing me to scream, “Jesus Christ!” and flail my arms about.

“Dude, it’s your turn for fire guard.”

Dude.

I take the flashlight and the vest (fire guard requires you to wear an orange vest with reflective tape on it, in case your duties dictate you become crossing guard as well) and walked around for about an hour.  I caught two separate people who thought they were going to the bathroom until I corrected them, and then I found the next person in charge and literally passed the torch.

I was shocked when it was time for PT (Physical Training) tests.  Turns out, I’m one of the five out of thirty people who can pass the PT test.  I know, stunning.  I did not do PE, not a runner, not a push up kind of a guy, but it’s like they say, you don’t have to outrun the bear and I managed to outrun twenty-five other rag-tag privates.


Twice a year the Army National Guard visits a fort so they can see what the real army is like.  We get off the bus and drill sergeants are shouting.  Actually, drill sergeants don’t shout, don’t yell, they’re just very loud people.  Like Ethel Merman. We got ready for bed and prepared for a Saturday full of trudging through water, crawling on the ground, making a bridge out of dead foreign babies and crossing it.

Bull.  Shit.  Drill sergeant wakes us up at 4 o’clock or zero four hundred or somewhere around there in the morning to go running.  Running.  I chugged a quart of water so I could run half a mile and then vomit all over someone’s boots.  And that only guaranteed me an hour while everyone else finished PT.
It only lasted a weekend, however I started thinking.  Boot camp is about six weeks of that, and even if they don’t catch on that I vomit everyday at about 4:30, all that acid would erode my teeth, and teeth that have been eroded by acid are only hot if you'd like to be the creepy old person that all the kids in the neighborhood think is a witch.

So, eventually I stopped going.  It helped that I found a psychologist and we discovered “depression” gets you out of the military, not for fear that you’ll shoot yourself in the head with an AK-47, but that you’ll take down other people before that.

It’s funny how often I think about the people that I trained with, that I swore in with, that I ran (sometimes) with, and wondering where they are.  If they are.  Salty drops of water begin to gather in my eyes, then I pop a Prozac and turn on America’s Next Top Model reruns.