My story
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We took the road less traveled and that made all the difference.
The road less traveled, as defined by yours truly: making unexpected choices, turning left when everyone expects you to turn right. Doing something completely other than the norm.
I would say that is exactly what I have been doing for the past 34 years. I didn’t choose the college route, I didn’t choose the “just start working” route. Nope, we went BIG. We left our parents speechless and left for boot camp.
We arrived to RTC (recruit training center) Orlando sometime in the middle of the night to a sort of parallel universe where knew “you’re not in Kansas anymore” Lord help you if you were chewing anything….- you were swallowing whatever substance it was. We marched and marched around some sort of cafeteria/gymnasium with a water fountain, where we each drank as much as we could on every single pass, we were like zombies, taken from our “normal” lives, in a circle until we could be sure that we would fill that cup with a urine sample that would make the powers that be proud. Finally that test was passed and we told to put everything we owned in a box to be sent home to our parents.
From every single walk of life that you can imagine.For whatever reasons that brought us to this exact place and time, we found ourselves in a melting pot of strangers and the scariest individuals we’d ever met about to break us down… I say again “what could possibly go wrong?” —” What the he** have we done?”
Finding myself alive after “the urine sample marathon and about an hour and fifteen minutes of sleep, our drill sergeants, (we were about to find out were like robots that require zero sleep) come in, light on, trumpets wailing “Reveille”. Holy Jesus, I could be back at home in my comfortable bed eating a large buttery cinnamon roll, but I am here in this crazy “rise at o’ dark thirty” existence. We woke like zombies, myself and my new family; at the mercy of these new “parents” we all had. I kept hearing in my head all of those people back home that thought I could not actually become a soldier so that was my incentive. I would not return to my small town and have failed.
Day by day we continued to fight our own demons, physical and mental. I thought about those that came before me with many more obstacles than I had and they pushed me. I would not fail. The shenanigans of boot camp are hard to describe, coupled with the exhaustion; it was tornado of beautiful disaster. When I look back it doesn’t seem like it was that difficult. We all kept the other up when we were down and became a make shift sort of family. When you are taken away from everything and everyone you know, you rely on those that are beside you. To this day, I cannot hear the song Desperado, and think of anything else.
Now all these years later I can look back and see how it shaped me into the person I am today. So many places that I would have never had a chance to experience, friends that I would have never met. I am proud to say I am a veteran and I respect and thank all those that are willing to put their lives on the line every single day to protect our freedoms.
If you would like to learn more about the USN and the opportunities they provide just click on the photo to the right.
This would become the first of my many stops along the road less traveled….to be continued
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In the beginning…
When I was a little girl, I remember flipping through the Sears catalog and seeing my future very clearly. I would cut out pictures of the dresses I would wear and the bedding for my beautiful bed. I imagined all the little details that would make up my grown-up life. My plan was to do great in school, graduate, attend college, and land a fantastic job. I dreamed of meeting an amazing man, getting married, and having wonderful kids—essentially, the whole white picket fence fantasy yada yada….
Check out all things 80’s I found right here!
I grew up in the eighties, the generation of big hair, great music and riding our bikes everywhere until dark. It seemed so logical that we would all grow up and live the fairy tale. What could possibly go wrong?
Well to start with, no one handed me a guidebook to anything that was coming and worse yet they don’t even print the damned Sears catalog anymore, what a tragedy.
Instead, during one of our life planning meetings (always happening on our rank second or maybe third hand sofa) my girlfriend says to me “let’s go to bootcamp” We grabbed the big thick yellow page phone book and the Navy was the first one we found. The recruiter (God bless you Darrell) was there lickety split. He arrived to our run down trailer house and probably thought “this is going nowhere”. Well fast forward a couple of months, a lot of testing, a few medical pokes, the papers were all signed. So began the first of the “what the he** did we just do” questions. We filled our last summer with adventures, friends, bonfires and dirt roads (you know who you are). Before we knew it our date came up and following many tears from our mother’s, my best friend, her sister (because who wouldn’t want a part of this action?) and myself were off into the great big world, going to conquer all they could throw at us. Again thinking “what could possibly go wrong?” We were about to find out….
