Boot Camp Memories

It was about 5 AM as I crept back into Mom and dad's house. I was careful when putting my key in the lock. We had a pocket door that separated the stair to the garage from the kitchen, and that was the way everyone came in and out of the house. It slid into the walls on rollers, and the rollers were noisy. But after years of sneaking in and out of the house, I learned they were much quieter if you lifted up on the door before sliding. I knew which part of the floor creaked and avoided it. I tiptoed through the dining room, down the hall, and past my older sisters’ room. I crept into my room, still quiet even though Mom and Dad’s room was on the other side of the house, and gently shut the door. I got undressed and climbed into bed, hoping to get a little sleep. But sleep would not come. There were too many thoughts racing through my mind. I lay awake in the pre-dawn darkness, thinking. I didn’t lay there long before I heard Dad’s footsteps coming down the hall.

"It’s time," he said, after opening my door.

"I know. I’m up." I lay there a minute longer before getting up and heading for the shower.

Shower complete, I went back to my room and put on whatever clothes were handy and clean. It didn’t matter much what they were, as my wardrobe consisted mainly of bell-bottoms and concert t-shirts. I packed a small bag (I wouldn’t be needing much) and went out to the kitchen where Dad was waiting. He lifted his chin and raised an eyebrow. "You ready?" I shifted my focus from the floor in front of me to him and nodded. We went outside and hopped into his F150.

Dad always drove an F150. They were always black, and they were always customized. The stick shift had an extension bar and beer tap. A reared-up stallion as the hood ornament. Airhorns. And running lights that rivaled the big rigs. I have a lot of memories in those trucks, and this is one of them.

We rode in silence all the way, and while the silence was warranted on this occasion, it wasn’t an exception. We usually rode in silence. We were men of few words, except when we weren’t. It was a 30-minute ride to the steps of the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building on East 9th Street in beautiful downtown Cleveland. It WAS beautiful – and still is – but not the kind of beauty an 18-year old could appreciate. It had the kind of beauty you feel in a hug from someone who has always been in your corner. But at the age of 18, I didn’t know beauty. I didn’t know a lot of things. What I DID know was there were an awful lot of steps to climb toward my future, and there they were, laid out before me. I started my ascent.

The exact chain of events inside that building has faded with time. The ’80s were a helluva decade, and we were only halfway through. Ultimately, I found myself in a large room with a bunch of other guys. We raised our right hands and took an oath before God that we would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and obey the orders of the officers appointed over me. That was a lot of obeying, and I wasn’t particularly fond or familiar with that kind of thing. After "So help me God" and a rousing round of applause, we broke off into smaller groups. Someone in a uniform came over to the group I was in, took a look at us, then handed me a big manila envelope. "You’re in charge of making sure everyone in this group gets to San Diego." The first thought that ran through my mind was, "what kind of dumb ass puts me in charge?" I had no idea who any of these fuckers were and no idea how I was supposed to make sure they all got to San Diego. I kept picturing one of them going AWOL and me standing in front of a firing squad for it. It wasn’t until our layover in Dallas that I accepted the fact that if someone ran, there was nothing I could do about it, and if they shot me, so be it.

I was a melodramatic little fuck, wasn’t I?

We left the room and headed to the RTA train that went from downtown to the airport. I had taken that train into the city for concerts many times. This was obviously different. I glanced around the train looking for the guys in my group. I had no idea what any of them looked like, except for one. He was a big country-strong dude in a flannel shirt. I figured as long as I saw him, I knew I was in the right place, and if not, I wouldn’t be the only one lost, and that if he at least showed up that I wasn’t a complete screw-up.

The train arrived at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and we all got off and made our way upstairs to the terminals and headed towards the gate. I could see Mom’s brave smile all the way from the other end of the concourse. Dad and Renee were there, as were a couple of friends from school. My shoes got heavier with each step.

We stood around the gate making small talk. I dislike small talk, but this wasn’t the time for deep discussions about our role in the cosmos or whether Megadeth could ever be as good as Metallica (SPOILER ALERT: they could and did). The time to board came, and I hugged everyone about three times.

I honestly thought I was never coming home again. Not in a morbid way, but that I would be living on a ship and the ship would be at sea, and we would pull into Singapore and Shanghai and other exotic places, but my life would be on board ship, and the ship would be at sea, never returning to the states. I told you I was a melodramatic fuck. I should have gone to the required meetings during the Delayed Entry Program, but that would have fallen under "doing as you are told," and that just wasn’t me. All that changed when the plane landed in San Diego, and we boarded the bus to Recruit Training Command. The yelling began instantly, and it was almost like Dad prepared me my whole life for this moment.

The flight itself was nothing special. It was an average aircraft with three seats on each side of the aisle. In the pocket of the seatback in front of you were copies of the corporate magazine (crossword already completed), Sky Mall catalogs, barf bags, and a set of proprietary headphones that plugged into the armrests so you could listen to the movie or to music. There were about a dozen or so channels you could choose from that ran the gamut from classical to country, R&B to adult contemporary. There was no metal station, despite it being the most popular form of music at the time. Each channel played about 20 or so songs on a continuous loop. I chose adult contemporary not because I liked the songs they had but that I was familiar with them. I was already stepping way outside my comfort zone and didn’t care to stray further. I got as comfortable as I could in a middle seat and tried to get some sleep. It seemed that each time I was roused out of my slumber – be it for the meal, turbulence, or just to shift positions in my seat – the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was playing. I didn’t particularly like Tears for Fears because that was the kind of music the preppies listened to, but it seemed as though someone somewhere was imploring me to listen. As the events of the coming weeks unfolded, I couldn’t help but think, "Welcome to your life."

About a decade or so later, I was sitting on the couch in my living room watching the Power Puff Girls with my kids. It was the episode where Mojo Jojo’s plan to take over the world finally succeeded. Everything he had been planning to do, everything he had hoped for, had finally come true. But he quickly found that ruling the world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He expresses his melancholy by singing in a voice that would make Tom Waits envious: "Welcome to Your Life."

I learned a lot in boot camp, and I’m not talking about left obliques or hospital corners. For a guy who knew he had the whole world figured out, I quickly realized I didn’t know shit, and that wasn’t because some cat with a red rope on his shoulder was screaming exactly that in my face. The realization slowly came to me that the world was a lot different than how it was in my head. I had no idea you could tie your shoes wrong. I had no idea you could fold your clothes wrong and thought the penalty for doing so was a bit over the top. I had no idea I could do that many pushups. I had no idea what a Filipino was or where the Philippines were, for that matter.

The biggest thing I learned was that none of us in Company 142 wanted to get our asses kicked, and in order to avoid that, we had to put everything else aside and work together.

That was 1985, and that lesson has stuck with me ever since.