Boot Camp...

Hello to all Steemians,

I would like to take a moment to let readers know I posted my introduction without many tags (because I didn't know what I was doing) where i gave a brief introduction about my self. I will be Steeming about my life and and journey to where I am today as a Plant-Based Ethical Vegan who happens the be a Marine. I would like to point out again that I am extremely new to Steemit, but from what I can gather it is a place to just be yourself and be real. I do not believe I am a professional writer by any means. However, I have recently wanted to get my story out there somehow to possibly help others. Moving forward I plan of telling my story in segments to whoever wants to read it. I hope any reader enjoys, any and all feed back is welcome.

For many people boot camp is torturous, it is painful, it is mentally draining, all can be said the moment your feet touch those famous yellow footprints of the United States Marine Corps recruit depots. What they don’t tell you is that afterwards, when you look back it can be some of the funniest shit of your life. You will see some crazy stuff in boot camp, at the time you can’t react like you normally would in your everyday life. You don’t have the luxury of letting this ridiculous event register as humor at the time so a lot of it gets skimmed over your brain housing group of humorous shit. There are small moments at the end of the day before you hit the rack (that’s bed time for you disgusting civilians) when you crack a joke or two with some guys, but for the most part the funny moments come after boot camp, when your assigned to a unit and your swapping stories with fellow jarheads. You’re all drinking one night and telling stories of shit that happened and as everyone is laughing it hits you at how fucking funny some of that shit really was.

You then start to laugh even more at your own story, and it continues with the next guy with his story. As you listen to others tell their boot camp stories in the back of your head you are just thinking about your own stories and just how fucked up some of that shit was. For example: I was in San Diego recruit depot from October 2003 through January 2004 thankfully it wasn’t the middle of the summer but it was still hot out in Cali at the end of October. Anywho we had just spent about 3 or 4 hours out on the parade deck. For those of you that don’t know it is a very large black top, about 600yds by 100yds according to Google earth. It was hot, we were tired and we had to go to chow (eat dinner) very soon. We then marched back to the barracks dripping with sweat. Before I go on I want to set the scene for anyone who hasn’t seen Full Metal Jacket and know what a barracks set up looks like. In this long warehouse type building there are windows along both sides all the way down lined with old metal squeaky bunk beds that look like the came from a toy factory in 1955, both you and your rack mate stand at the foot of them at least 20 times throughout the day. You become very familiar with this position, and since your head is always straight forward you become very familiar with everything in front of you, all of your surroundings are familiar to you. You see these same faces every day, every morning, afternoon, every night. You can tell when someone’s boot is untied, or a fly is on their shoulder 20ft away. I would also like to note that this building also known as a squadbay do to the fact that the Marine Corps takes terminology from the Navy because the Navy gives Marines a ride everywhere we go, kind of like our personal Uber drivers. Anywho the squadbay is about 200ft long with roughly 80 people in a platoon. You have 40 on one side and 40 on the other, so the guys on the one end of the squadbay will rarely interact throughout our daily regiment with the guys on the other end, there are completely different perspectives in this situation. I was at the front of the squadbay where the Drill Instructors office and sleeping quarters were. This is where our daily instructions were given from, the Drill instructors were constantly talking from this area, therefore it is a lot harder to joke around, snicker, hell do anything at all. I speak on behalf of the other end of the squadbay, this is not to say that you could get away with moving around at all on one end, you can see any movement whatsoever when everyone is standing still and straight. Now that we have set the premise I can get back to that late fall afternoon/evening, we get back and everyone is lined up in our places the Drill Instructor is going over our itinerary of what is to come, tells us that we will go to chow and come back and do some mini drills in the squadbay, which sucks dick. Nobody wants to set up the “mini grinder” after chow and do hand drill with rifles, its miserable… Well during this moment the Drill Instructor is talking, this recruit across form me on the other side raises his hand… Anyone who went through Marines Corps boot camp knows that you never interrupt the Drill Instructor outside of a training lesson where questions are expected by raising your hand unless it’s an emergency, like you have to have a medical situation going on right then and there, broken leg, diabetic shock (then your buddy’s hand would be raised), something serious must be going on in order for you a measly ole recruit interrupts this God like figure during a period of instruction! Drill Instructor looks over at him with disgust, in a deep pissed off tone “what do youuu want?” “Sir, this recruit requests permission to make an emergency head call sir!” Again for the civilians out there, the “head” is a term for bathroom, and we had to request permission to use the head if it wasn’t our standard break time to do so, you never requested this for fear of what will afterwards, punishment for interrupting whatever was going on, you always waited to use the bathroom and at this point in the day we all knew we were just about to get one of these breaks before going to eat so it was odd that he was insisting on making this request. “Oh, good, good this better be good recruit! What is it number 1 or number 2?” “Sir, number 2 sir!” “Fuck no, you can wait till after this period of instruction!” “Sir, this recruit shit himself sir!!!” “OH Fuck NO (as he is eyeballing him up and down) you disgusting piece of shit, get in there in clean yourself up!” It was at this point that it took every bit of me to keep from busting out one of those epic laughs, the great elephant laugh where you bust out between your shut lips. It was a moment where it really tested ones composure. The Drill Instructors job is amazing at times, it really is, how this guy stood there straight face and continued on with instruction is beyond me. Given the situation we are in you don’t have that moment to relish in, to sit there and crack up laughing for ten minutes, the moment is stripped from you. The intensity is snapped right back into your body and you have to just store it away in your memory bank. I’m sure there are some might think “poor guy”, or “that’s gross”, sure it’s a little gross, but given the circumstances we were in that was some funny ass shit that was immediately robbed from funny ass shit moments. Sure a couple of us talked about it later before hitting the rack, one guy did say “ew man that’s gross, I can’t believe he did that”, but the movement of humor was gone so we had time to let it sink in what happened and our rational mindset took over. To this day I don’t know if he actually did shit himself or not, think about it. Imagine if he simply said he shat himself just to get to run to the head to actually take a deuce. You have to realize number two’s were never granted on their time ever. You had to wait till we had a break to do that, and in those moments multiple people had to go and we didn’t have stall doors, so there you were taking a crap starring at another guy taking a crap across from you. There were stall walls, so we weren’t high fiving the guy next to use but still you couldn’t poop without seeing your buddy squint to poop too. At the end of the day if this guy sacrificed his pride to feel a brief moment of humiliation because he knew it would only be a moment since we would be forced back to reality just so he could go take a poo in privacy, then that guy my friend is a genius.

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Post Disclaimer: I know my grammar is terrible. I'm working on it. Please comment and let me know what you think.