Surf and Turf???

In August of 92 I had come off a great summer. I had to make it a good one because I was signing away two years of my life to Uncle Sam in exchange for college money. I hung out with good friends, took a couple road trips, and inevitably the day came for me to turn in my freedom to protect the freedom of others. The day before I went to basic I cut my hair, which was down to my shoulder blades. I didn't want the army barber to have the satisfaction. The next day I was on a plane (always cool for the plaingeek) on my way to Oklahoma for basic training. I was more than a little nervous when I arrived in OK. It's not like they have someone there to greet you when you step off the plane. Thank goodness it was a small airport or I might not have figured out where to go and been AWOL on my first day. From the airport, they shipped me on a long bus ride to the base where I would be spending the next few months of my life. Once the bus door opened life, as I knew it, ended. From the moment you get off the bus there are drill sergeants screaming at you. It's just like the movies. Hurry up! Stand here! Get in line! Bla bla bla! From there they herd you into a room and the paperwork starts.

When I was in my early high school years a teacher flat out told me to stop writing in cursive because she couldn't read my writing. From that point on, I printed every letter with one exception. My name. It was the only thing I could write legibly when I finished school. The army beat that ability out of me in two hours by my making me sign everything a bazillion times. You had to sign everything. Sign that you received X, sign you turned in Y, sign that you signed the form that had X and Y. My signature quickly became a scribble. It never recovered. To this day I can't sign my name legibly anymore unless I concentrate.

They don't waste any time. By dinner time myself and two hundred other Privates had uniforms, hair cuts, shots, a PT test to see if you could do 13 push-ups, a reasonable ability to march, and a sore index finger from signing crap all day long. As the day was winding down we all marched over to the chow hall to get our dinner. I heard horror stories about military food, and I assumed they were pretty much true. We were rushed into the mess to our awaiting dinner. I expected some sort of gruel or other oatmeal like substance. What did I get? Steak and lobster! "Sweet!" I'm thinking to myself "This army thing ain't too bad after all." Yea the steak was a little on the dry side and the lobster tail was a tad bit rubbery and they only gave us 3 minutes to eat it, but I couldn't believe it! First day in and I'm already eating better than I did the whole summer. That was the first, last, and only time I ever had steak and lobster in the army. I slept like a rock until four AM when the fairy tale ended with a drill sergeant beating on a trash can.