I don't remember who the guy was, but I do remember that he managed to screw up at the point where it seemed like it wasn't even possible anymore.
It was the day before our graduation from Infantry School at Fort Benning. Everyone in Alpha 2/58 had been given a six hour pass to spend a little time with their families before the festivities and hullabaloo of the graduation ceremony. And it was great, for all of us. Just some time off with the people you cared about, and who you hadn't seen in fourteen weeks. My parents were there, along with my brother and his girlfriend and a friend of mine who'd flown out from California. We went to the Waffle House and everyone commented on how much weight I'd lost.
At 1800 hours, the men of Alpha 2/58 returned to our barracks, standing in formation for one of the last times, listening to roll call. Then, one of the Drills from third platoon yelled, "What the hell are you wearing?"
Yeah, we were in formation, at attention, but we turned around anyway. Not that the Drills really cared. All of us had come through our FTX and the twenty-five mile march, we'd had our Crossed Rifle ceremony, and but for one more day, we were Infantry. Besides, the Drills wanted to know what was happening, too.
So we craned our necks and looked at the guy who was getting yelled at, in third platoon's front rank. And as we looked at him, it became apparent that something wasn't quite right with his camoflage BDU's.
The Drill who was yelling grabbed the young citizen-soldier and checked a tag on the inside back of the private's top. Then the Drill pointed at the ground, and the kid started knocking out pushups, which he was still doing when the rest of us were dismissed.
Turned out that to celebrate, the youngster had gone to an Army Supply store off post, to get himself four brand-spanking-new sets of BDU's. Unfortunately for him, he failed to notice that the BDU's in question weren't from the Armerican Army, but for use in New Zealand.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Cool Girl
I met a girl once, in Japan. She was amazing.
I've always liked Asian women. The best relationship I've ever had was with a lovely Chinese girl. But this new girl, she looked to blow that one out of the water.
We met right after I arrived in country, and spent every minute together that we could. She spoke English very well, and taught me a lot of Japanese. She seemed to think I was perfect, and I was quite sure she was.
So we spent days together, mixing visits with tourist attractions and local places she showed me. We laughed a lot, and held hands, and smiled at each other constantly.
It was perfect. Up until the moment the lights came on, and they started rousting everyone out of bed.
It was the start of another day of Basic Training. I wasn't in Japan. I was on Sand Hill, in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Ain't that a bitch?
I've always liked Asian women. The best relationship I've ever had was with a lovely Chinese girl. But this new girl, she looked to blow that one out of the water.
We met right after I arrived in country, and spent every minute together that we could. She spoke English very well, and taught me a lot of Japanese. She seemed to think I was perfect, and I was quite sure she was.
So we spent days together, mixing visits with tourist attractions and local places she showed me. We laughed a lot, and held hands, and smiled at each other constantly.
It was perfect. Up until the moment the lights came on, and they started rousting everyone out of bed.
It was the start of another day of Basic Training. I wasn't in Japan. I was on Sand Hill, in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Ain't that a bitch?
Friday, January 12, 2007
Thing is, you'd be wrong
It would seem logical to think that sometime in my 34 years of stomping this sorry and wonderful globe, I'da picked up some kind of useful job skill.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Ode to a Crackerbox
Ah, the joy of it. The joy of being in possesion of a place of my own, where a door can be locked on the whole rest of the world!
No roommates walking around arguing loudly with their significant others. No pets, constantly shedding, innundating my domicile with their fur, coating my clothes and flavoring my food. No fighting for use of the computer. Actually, no computer, but so what? The central branch of the library, such a lovely building, is less than a mile away. Gives me a reason to get out of the place for a while, close enough that even on hellish winter days it's worthwhile to go. Local shops, a couple of neat bookstores also within walking distance. Even a New York style pizza place, by which I mean a semi-sanitary hole-in-the-wall that serves wide slices you gotta fold in half while eating.
No walk to shovel. Bliss.
Sure the new spot's small. Sure, I can take a shower, cook something, watch a movie, and answer the door all at the same time. It's over-priced, even. But I don't give a rat's ass. It's no worse than the last place I lived in New York, and I don't have to go down the hall to get a shower.
Truly a joyous New Year, Y'all.
No roommates walking around arguing loudly with their significant others. No pets, constantly shedding, innundating my domicile with their fur, coating my clothes and flavoring my food. No fighting for use of the computer. Actually, no computer, but so what? The central branch of the library, such a lovely building, is less than a mile away. Gives me a reason to get out of the place for a while, close enough that even on hellish winter days it's worthwhile to go. Local shops, a couple of neat bookstores also within walking distance. Even a New York style pizza place, by which I mean a semi-sanitary hole-in-the-wall that serves wide slices you gotta fold in half while eating.
No walk to shovel. Bliss.
Sure the new spot's small. Sure, I can take a shower, cook something, watch a movie, and answer the door all at the same time. It's over-priced, even. But I don't give a rat's ass. It's no worse than the last place I lived in New York, and I don't have to go down the hall to get a shower.
Truly a joyous New Year, Y'all.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Top o' the Year to ya!
2006 ended with my air mattress springing a leak. Before turning in this evening, the last of the year, I used the pump provided with my inflatable sleeping convenience to achieve a comfortable firmness in the thing, and then woke up some hours later to find myself in the beginnings of a rubberized foxhole. I made this discovery at 11:55 PM, December 31st, 2006.
It’s really my fault, though. I mean, I’m an eighth of a ton of fighting American male, and it’s a mass-produced balloon. Of course over-inflating would lead to stress on its fabric and seams, causing the leak, the actual location of which has so far eluded me. But it’s there, leaking out precious air molecules.
I bought the thing just over a week ago, and I was hoping to get at least a couple of months of use out of it. And now it’s just another warning that I should probably lose weight.
I could spin the air-mattress into a metaphor for my life, and not just this past year. The high hopes at the beginning, the progress of some plan that at first goes swimmingly, the beginnings of failure caused by a combination of personal errors and flaws in design, the inevitable end finding me laying on a hard floor on top of a sadly deflated sleeping balloon. You know, that old chestnut.
The hell with that. It’s a cheap air-mattress, not a metaphor for the Grand Design of the Universe, or the path I tread therein. Even if it is, I don’t care. The year’s over. The year’s begun. It was a hell of a year, the one behind, in many senses of the word; and I have no reason not to think the coming year won’t be a hell of a year in its own right. The future, as always, is upon all of us, waiting for each of us to commit those actions which, woven together, form our existence. That last sentence was right purty, if I do say so myself.
In Watchmen, Alan Moore has one of his characters, Ozymandias, who has committed a great crime in what he sees as the service of humanity, ask another character, Dr. Manhattan, if his actions were correct, in the end. And Ozymandias is told that nothing ever really ends.
The air-mattress is just an air-mattress, like Freud said. It won’t be a metaphor for anything, just an object lesson about not buying cheap inflatables. It’ll do.
Happy New Year.
It’s really my fault, though. I mean, I’m an eighth of a ton of fighting American male, and it’s a mass-produced balloon. Of course over-inflating would lead to stress on its fabric and seams, causing the leak, the actual location of which has so far eluded me. But it’s there, leaking out precious air molecules.
I bought the thing just over a week ago, and I was hoping to get at least a couple of months of use out of it. And now it’s just another warning that I should probably lose weight.
I could spin the air-mattress into a metaphor for my life, and not just this past year. The high hopes at the beginning, the progress of some plan that at first goes swimmingly, the beginnings of failure caused by a combination of personal errors and flaws in design, the inevitable end finding me laying on a hard floor on top of a sadly deflated sleeping balloon. You know, that old chestnut.
The hell with that. It’s a cheap air-mattress, not a metaphor for the Grand Design of the Universe, or the path I tread therein. Even if it is, I don’t care. The year’s over. The year’s begun. It was a hell of a year, the one behind, in many senses of the word; and I have no reason not to think the coming year won’t be a hell of a year in its own right. The future, as always, is upon all of us, waiting for each of us to commit those actions which, woven together, form our existence. That last sentence was right purty, if I do say so myself.
In Watchmen, Alan Moore has one of his characters, Ozymandias, who has committed a great crime in what he sees as the service of humanity, ask another character, Dr. Manhattan, if his actions were correct, in the end. And Ozymandias is told that nothing ever really ends.
The air-mattress is just an air-mattress, like Freud said. It won’t be a metaphor for anything, just an object lesson about not buying cheap inflatables. It’ll do.
Happy New Year.
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