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
