The Music Man

Cueball told me TUESDAY that I needed to be able to do 17 push-ups by FRIDAY to get promoted before I left. I had just worked myself up to seven (from zero). I had been feeling pretty good about it until I heard what I had to do. I didn't see how in hell it could happen, but set up an appointment for Friday anyway.

Friday morning my Mom asked me to pick out a movie and I wanted something I wouldn't get sucked into, so I put on The Music Man. Professor Harold Hill was just explaining to the band that they didn't actually need to know HOW to play the musical instruments, they just had to THINK the song they wanted to play and they would be able to play it, when I called Cueball.

"17 aint gonna happen," I told him.
"You just gotta use the power of positive thinking! If you think you can, then you can! I have faith in you!"

After a while you just get tired of arguing with people like that. If ever I can't do anything, it's because I told myself I can't, and not because I actually couldn't. I agree that we're usually capable of more than we can believe, but I mean come ON. When I was a kid I spent two solid months chanting to myself that I could fly but I never was able to. Then I was depressed for a while because I thought it was my own fault, because I didn't believe in it enough.

I could mention religion at this point, but I hate beating dead horses. Anyway, I kept the appointment and managed to pump out nine push-ups, so I didn't get the promotion. I don't really care about that, though. It's not like I'll be spending much of the money I'm earning while I'm at basic.

See you suckas later! For the next couple months, all entries will be typed from letters I've sent to helpers. I've given them access to this blog and if anything wacky happens on here while I'm gone, I'll beat them up when I get out. Cuz I'll be a beefy, trained killer! Hooah!

Lent Me

Angel ornaments during Christmas are the closest my parents will come to Christianity. Renunciation is not their thing, so Jesus gets no love during Lent. My parents tend to make their own holidays.

My mom told me the other night that she wont drink any wine while I'm at Boot Camp. At first I did not understand why she decided this or why she told me, but now I understand that she wants to be more connected to my suffering, bless her heart.

The only necklace allowed by regulations must be religious and my mom wanted to get me a gift, so she ordered a "jesus fish" pendant to give me when they visit me at graduation. I'm not the biggest Jesus groupie but this particular ichthys is the nose-pointing-upward kind, also called a vesica pisces... representative of the/a vagina. *cackle*

Animal Farm

Hanging around with my fellow "future soldiers" left me feeling old (though my dad told me the other day that I was born old). As Cueball* drove me home, I asked him about the two obnoxious girls who had followed Mustache* around like puppies.
"Oh, the blonde one by herself isn't so bad, Mustache is her recruiter. It's when she's with her friend... together they're terrible. Mustache gives them attention, that's why they follow him around like that."
"I used to be like that in high school."
I don't think Cueball believed me.

Maybe this naturally happens to everyone, as we accrue experience and scars: we try to eradicate parts of ourselves. Society teaches us which ones to put in cages and shuffle off into darkened corners. Some shamans believe that when trauma shocks the soul, part of it separates. After a time, your soul is in pieces. This description always reminded me of schizophrenia... a trauma causes a separation in a place that can only be described as within.

The noise and smell of a wild animal in a small, enclosed space is much worse than the noise and smell of a wild animal with the whole world to roam in. Then multiply the animals, the smell, the noise...

Enough! If nature loves diversity, it wont mind a few more monsters. Let the world look after itself, my critters gotta be free! Hoorah, I'm young again!

*Names changed not for protection but for my own amusement.

In Which I Enlist

I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed hanging out with young jackasses at the hotel the night before processing. There was a jacuzzi and poker. The one other girl for processing didn't show up at the hotel until midnight, so basically it was me and fifteen guys all evening. I suppose I should get acclimated to such ratios...

At the butt-crack of dawn I joined sixteen zombies downstairs for a surly breakfast. These were not chatty morning people. Maybe being a natural morning person will give me an edge during the upcoming ordeal?

The doctor was about 100 years old and apparently he's been working there for the past half-century. He (like everyone else that day) said (observing the airborne request poking out of my packet) "So you want to jump out of airplanes!" Jumping out of planes seemed an incidental perk of 37F, not the goal at all, so this repeated comment/question surprised me. The repetition also had a cumulative effect on my psyche. At first I responded with... "Um, I guess..." and by the end of the day I was all "Hell YEAH!"

A long day of vision tests, hearing tests, range-of-motion tests, blood tests, urine tests, and paperwork culminated in The Security Interview. The woman who interviewed me for security clearance was all they said she'd be. She took everything I said out of context and her every word through the phone bristled with hostility and contempt. She called me a liar and said I couldn't be trusted with sensitive information, because the only people who admit to trying pot a specific number of multiple times are lifetime drug fiends lying about being lifetime drug fiends. Lifetime drug fiends can't be trusted with sensitive government information. No clearance meant no 37F.

As soon as I failed to get clearance, I asked the Army liaison to check for Parachute Rigger openings. I had already passed my Airborne physical tests and answering "So you want to jump out of airplanes," all day had me primed.

Not only was there an opening at the end of this month (this is a positive because I had preferred to skip the rest of the winter here) but the duration is only 3 years and not four, and the enlistment bonus is three times what I had been looking at with other MOSes. So my sadness was short-lived. I signed the contract and was sworn in, and now I'm home until the 25th of February, when I ship out to Ft. Jackson in SC for basic training.