August 16, 1997 - You Could Stand on Your Head in the Corner

970816 - Wed, Thu, & Fri was more A-Line. I could go into detail about it but I hated it so much that I've blocked most of it out of my mind. One thing I remember is that the DIs treated us like DUNG all week. Partly because they wanted to and partly because there's a DI from San Diego who's here for the rest of our stay here on "Paradise Island." Anyway, there was a 4-mile motivational run this morning and the rest of the day was spent moving back "home." I actually like this squad bay; especially after spending the last 3 weeks in that tiny one at Weapons Bn. But who cares? I could stand anything for the 13 days we have left...

To be clear, the barracks we had in weapons battalion were a dump. It was cramped, the toilets didn't have dividers, the AC could never keep up. All in all, it sucked. Nonetheless, it was surprising that I was actually happy to be back in our old squad bay.  It was only slightly less crappy than the squad bay we had lived in for the past 3 weeks. But although our real squad bay was bad, but it was our bad. It was ugly and hot and smelly, but it was our ugly, hot, smelly, and no one could take that from us.

Prior to going to boot camp, my father (who had been in the Army in the 101st Airborne Division, and had earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star while serving in Vietnam) tried to encourage me by saying, "It's only thirteen weeks. You could stand on your head in the corner for thirteen weeks." Despite the fact that this isn't true (you would die, as my father later pointed out), the idea of survival  for me somehow became associated with the number 13. That's why, despite the fact that A-Line was monumentally terrible and I had now somehow defined "home" as just another sweat-stinking dump, the fact that I now had 13 days remaining somehow meant that I would make it through, no matter how difficult the training.