It was shortly before my 30th birthday when I got fired from the plastic bag factory that it was time to pursue my dream of becoming a military linguist. I had spent the last year watching the rise of ISIS and all their atrocities. My goal was to join the Army, learn Arabic, and do what I could to defeat them. But first I had to lose 50 pounds. I moved back in with my parents and spent the next six months walking on a treadmill for four or five hours every day. Most days, I’d drink three or four beers to cope with the boredom and misery. Not smart, but I did achieve my goal. The Army recruiters I met with once a week said they had never seen anyone so determined.
I enlisted in August 2015 after getting a perfect score on the ASVAB, the military mental aptitude test. And I know I got a perfect score because the proctor told me moments after I submitted it. I didn’t get to pick my language, but I got the job I wanted and a $40,000 bonus when I completed training. I’ll always love the Army, I just got to the point when I didn’t want to be in it anymore. To paraphrase the great philosopher Homer Simpson, the Army looked deep inside my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined. After three employers in a row threw me in the trash, the Army gave me another chance. Same goes for the NSA, which I worked for under the Army’s auspices. It’s pretty hard to get a top-secret clearance and I’m grateful they took a chance on me.
The last thing my mom told me before I left for the Army:
Her: I’d tell you to give ’em hell, but I know you. Don’t give ’em anything! Just do what they tell you.
Basic training was easier and more fun than I expected. You know you’ve broken a drill sergeant’s spirit when they stop yelling at you and start saying ‘please’.
Once I had to wake up the guy on the next fire guard shift and despite increasing amounts of jostling, he stayed asleep. As I was desperate to return to my bunk, I pinched his nostrils shut for a few seconds until he woke with a start. We spent a lot of time standing next to each other because our last names are almost the same and were friends despite the incident.
As I was the shortest male, I often ended up at the front of the formation and so became the designated mailman. Once while waiting in line to throw practice grenades, I had the following conversation:
Him: Did you get the mail?
Me: Yes.
Him: Did you put it in the mailbox?
Me: Yes. That’s why when you asked me ‘did you get the mail?’, I said yes!
Well, that got the attention of the drill sergeant and my last line in the discussion I had with was: I haven’t called you anything except ‘drill sergeant’, drill sergeant.
My crowning achievement were the lines that got me banned from calling cadence. I began with the familiar formula: they say that in the Army, the training’s mighty fine. And I finished it with: SHARP and EO classes are not a waste of time!
I believe I got just about the whole battalion laughing at that moment.
SHARP and EO are the Army’s don’t be a rapist and don’t be a racist programs respectively. Soldiers must spend hours every year in refresher training despite the near total absence of rapists and racists in the Army. If I were a less scrupulously man, I would sell tiger-repelling rocks to the Army, as the logic is the same.
I was in a SHARP class once and the presenter said that victims of rape rarely lie about it. I was tempted to quote the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate to her. He said that if an accusation is all you need to condemn someone, who could be called innocent? Logic does not seem to be the main subject of gender studies majors.
Nonetheless, one drill sergeant said at graduation that I was very funny. She had previously treated me when the thumb clip of a practice grenade went through my thumb like a fishhook when I pushed on it with my thumb as I had been instructed. Murphy’s Law is never far off.
So off to the Defense Language Institute in scenic Monterey, California. I had a wonderful time there and was thankful for my luck in being assigned Levantine Arabic. I was a few steps closer to fighting ISIS. It was a bit disappointing that I was not picked for an overseas immersion despite my high grades, though the fact that I was able to learn Arabic in my 30s still gives me pride. My prior knowledge of Swahili made it easier as about 20% of Swahili words are from Arabic. The word Swahili itself is from the Arabic word for coast. Arabs and Africans met on the coast to trade and invented Swahili as a common language.
I lived in the barracks and had the room to myself for a time. Later, I got a roommate who barely spoke to me for the first month. I found out later that someone told him I had been a mercenary in Africa, hence my age and knowledge of Swahili. I never thought I’d need to tell someone that I was not a mercenary, alas such are the burdens of living an exotic life. It turns out he was assigned to my room because he was in danger of failing the course and it was thought that I could save him. I did my best to tutor him, and he made it to the end of the course. He needed two tries to pass the final exam, but he did and when I checked with him later, he was doing well on mission. DLI flunks out more people than any school on the planet and my hat is off to anyone who even attempts it.
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