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.