July 13, 1997 - Be It Ever So Humble...

970713 - Slept in today...until 0400. After morning chow I slept some more and was q'decked twice. At 1500, after some "games" (DI style), we came back "home" (our normal squad bay). Then we did some drill and played more "games." We squared away our gear and prepared for inspection. I'm very motivated about the rest of boot camp. This week is swim qualification and I'm not real worried about it. 47 days left.
Sometimes, even the best plan for sleeping without detection fails. This is probably because, unlike when I had previously employed the tactic, now the whole platoon was there, as were all of the Drill Instructors. It's notable that I got caught twice; I'm nothing if not persistent.

The games mentioned were excruciatingly frustrating in the moment, but completely pointless in the long run. Essentially, the Drill Instructors needed to make sure we packed everything up well for the trip back to our regular squad bay. If we started to move too slowly, they would find ways to speed us up, usually by making us scramble and pack as quickly as possible. If, as was more often the case, we were ahead of schedule (or just waiting for the rest of the military, which is always behind schedule, to catch up), they would find fault with something someone had done and punish everyone for it. Sometimes by making us all unpack completely; sometimes by making us do push-ups or dips or mountain climbers; sometimes by making us try to pack someone else's things, which of course would never work so we would have to unpack everything again. It was all done "with a sense of urgency" despite the fact that they were clearly just trying to kill time.

 Unrelated-to-boot-camp side note: Five years after I wrote this journal entry, I began an even more incredible journey: I got married. If you'd like to take a look at another writing project I took on related to that, click here. It's called a crown of sonnets (or a heroic crown, or a redouble). It consists of 15 sonnets. The last line of the 1st sonnet is the first line of the 2nd, all the way to the 14th; the last line of that is the first line of the 1st. The 15th sonnet is comprised of the first line of the other 14, in order. Each sonnet loosely describes that year in our marriage.

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