Another Weekend in the Trenches #10

Drill weekend went by kinda fast, but then kinda not.  It was weird, in a way.  I was disappointed to have drill in the first place because as usual, there is always something exciting going on during the weekend I have drill.  There are four or five weekends in a month, and three of them I will be sitting at home, doing nothing and then suddenly it’s drill weekend and everybody is having a party.  There was a food and wine festival in DC that I wanted to go to but no…. I had drill.  Then my dad wanted me to go to Atlanta with him for my uncle’s birthday, but no…. I had drill.

Saturday I started work in my new position, where I am basically a gofer girl.  It sounds like the perfect thing for me to complain about but actually, I am glad of it for several reasons.  One, it gives me something to do other than watching the clock.  Yes, I’d rather be goofing off with everyone else but goofing off does not make the time go by faster.  Most of the morning I was in the office learning how to work some of the systems that will become my responsibility in future.  Then I was running out passing messages between sergeants and whatnot.  Like a toddler, I was kept occupied and before too long it was time for lunch.  Afterward, we had the usual round of briefings and whatnot, but then the day started to drag.  I was annoyed to find that it was almost 6PM before they let us go home.  Yeah, yeah, I know that mantra about “training to standard and not to time,” but the last hour we weren’t doing anything.  We were given no instructions, so therefore, we are not training… and we should go home.

That threw off my evening plans a little bit.  I had told Debonair to come over after 6PM.  He texted me at 545 to say he was around the corner.  Too bad I was still at the armoury.  Luckily, I do not live very far away.  He came over to share with me this dangerous double chocolate super fudge cake he brought for Valentine’s Day.  We ended up at the buffet around the corner and then we destroyed that cake.  It was a sad state of being.  We hung out until after 1AM, which is such a no go for me.  I just do not like to be tired when I am working and the next morning when it was time to get up I wanted to cry.

Sunday was more learning about the systems and other things.  Sitting in the office gave me an interesting picture of what goes on behind the scenes.  It’s a good thing and a bad thing.  I am truly nosy as hell but there are some things I just don’t want to know because they will only depress me.  That’s all I’m going to say about that.  I will say that I’m glad I was able to make the move because there were certain announcements made that had me cringing.  Leadership is changing in the unit.  Like everything, some of it is good and some of it is bad.  The army is really all about coping with things.  It’s not an amusement park and if you’re looking for the perfect life than the army is not for you.  When things I don’t like come down, I just learn how to adjust so that I am not stressed out.  Like I told someone who asked, I’m just making sure that I am set up for success and if making a move is the only thing to get my mind right, then that is what I need to do.  Some of the changes that came down really disappointed me but there’s nothing I can do about it but deal with it and move on.

The rest of the day went by in a bit of a blur.  I had to work on those usual training classes we do every year and then we sat in the computer room, goofing like old times.  Then it was time to leave.  I was glad because I was truly dragging by the end.  The sad part was that I couldn’t immediately go home because I had to get my dad from the airport.

On another note, I ended up not re-enlisting, not because I don’t want to.  I do.  I’ve already made that decision.  It was just for the length of time that I was quibbling over.  I am reclassing to another MOS and because of that I have to have a certain amount of time left over after I get out of school.  But then there is no guarantee that I will go to the school in the first place, so I’d be re-enlisting for a lengthy period of time and not really getting anything for it.  I was enrolled in the school but I need to wait for state approval.  Once I get state approval, then I should re-enlist.  If I don’t hear anything from the state by May, then I will only re-enlist one year at a time.  This was some solid advice and I took it.  Yes, I love the army but I am not about to do this shit for God and country.  That’s a big no.

I told another soldier that this is really a good time for us because so many of the older enlisted are rolling out.  If we’re going to make some moves, the time is now.  Strike while the iron is hot, as they say.  Also it is looking good for a promotion maybe by the end of this year.  There are only three ahead of me and one of them is out of the running for the time being.  That means I only have to kidnap the other two.

I never lied about my ambition, so don’t like it’s all new to you.

At any rate, I think it was a pretty good weekend.  Very low-stress.  No drama.  And that is the way I like it.  We’ll see what happens next month when we get to the fuck around with that damn tent again.  I wonder what would happen if I just set fire to the whole damn thing?  Maybe somebody will put me in for an award.  Okay, maybe not, but I can dream.

Another Weekend in the Trenches #7

I was seriously in the trenches this drill weekend.  What a roller coaster.  I can’t precisely say how I feel about this weekend; my feelings seem to be all over the place.  I started off dreading its approach because I found myself less and less in the mood to deal with bullshit.  The week before, I was thinking of ways I could get out of it but I was unsuccessful at coming up with a plausible excuse.  I was even more dejected when I found out my platoon sergeant wasn’t coming and then further slapped in the face when another comrade suddenly couldn’t go.  But I guess some things really do happen for a reason.

I was supposed to be assisting with a task but I found myself completely in charge of that task, only it did not work as well as I intended, or maybe it did.  I don’t know.  See how confusing this all is?

The whole weekend was a convergence of fuck ups, mishaps and misunderstandings, splattered over top power struggles, incompetence and sheer stupidity.  It is like with each passing drill weekend, leadership just gets more and more stupid. They make nonsensical plans that are wasteful and time consuming so that nothing real ever gets accomplished.  It’s left morale among the junior troops at an all time low.  I think if we had an option to get out right now at this very moment there would only be like two of us left, and I’m being very generous.

Last night when I was contemplating in my mind what I wanted to write for this log entry, I had a grand design of cussing everybody out, but now I see there is little point in doing so.  All the fire fueling my anger seems to have gone out.  I guess because the way I look at it, I only have 14 more days in the National Guard.  I refuse to let these experiences ruin the plans I’ve set for myself but I admit that it is hard to stay motivated.

We are no longer a team.  Forget about all that Army of One crap that was our motto a few years back.  This is the Army of You Over There and Me Over Here.  The Army of I Don’t Really Give a Shit.  And more and more, I really don’t give a shit, and I don’t want to give into that.  I’m made of sterner stuff.  After my ghastly experience at basic training, I told myself there isn’t anything I can’t get through.  So when I look at it in that light I have to say that this is not as bad as all that.  It’s not even close.

So what if I had to sleep in the arms room for reasons unknown.  It was just kind of bizarre, and for all the complaining that I did (and you know I complain about EVERYTHING, good and bad) it wasn’t even that horrible.  In fact, it was better and exactly what I’d wished for.  I came into the weekend hoping that I would be overly tasked so that I could stay perpetually busy.  I got what I asked for… in spades.  It was quiet and warm.  I wasn’t subject to the ghetto black trash with their loud R&B music and empty conversations.  I didn’t have to deal with anything that I didn’t want to deal with.  I even got my own bathroom.  What more can I ask for?  Except maybe a proper bed.  That was the only downfall.

I guess it’s irrational of me to expect leadership to have fully thought their plans through.  If they wanted a soldier to sleep in the arms room, they might have at least provided a cot.  Instead, I got one of those things that they use to carry injured patients around.  I was about an inch off the ground, but I’ll say that it was better than the sail boat bed I was gonna sleep on in the barracks.  That thing would have hurt my back. It was the stumbling around in the dark that hurt my back.  I was trying to sit down so I could put socks on and I completely missed the chair and fell down hard on on some pole thing.  Luckily no one was around to see me.

At least the weather was better for the range.  When we came out to the range in August I thought I was going to do die but this time around I was more comfortable.  It took me a second to zero because the safety who was assisting me didn’t really know what he was doing.  I think he adjusted my sights in the wrong direction the first couple of times but we did manage to get it right and I was able to zero without losing my mind.  The qualification range was one of the easiest I’ve been on.  I qualified as sharpshooter and I feel redeemed for that fiasco at Fort Pickett at which I could only knock down eight targets at a time.  I’ve been shooting all my life and never have I turned in such a dismal record.  I guess it really is the weather.  When I shoot indoors I do well.  When I shoot in the cold I do well.  When it’s hot, I just fuck up. I no longer hate the M4.

I heard that a number of people didn’t qualify but I think it’s mainly because they only got one chance at the range.  Once again, leadership failed.  Since we are national guard, we don’t get to hit the range as often as active duty.  Not everybody shoots for recreation.  Not everybody has been deployed.  Shooting is a perishable skill.  If you don’t do it often you will not be good at it and you will become lax in the fundamentals.  You have to give these people some time to accomplish the task, but I guess I’m just making too much sense.

After all, I am only an E4, and therefore completely incompetent.

And speaking of incompetence, whose super genius idea was it to conduct a PT test in the early morning hours on a cold, windy day?  That’s setting your troops up for success.  And weighing people after a long weekend of eating MREs and junk food.  Yup, that’s a real winner there.  And they wonder why morale is in the toilet and the suicide rate is high.  The army just doesn’t know how to manage its time and resources well.  I know everybody’s all into the “old school” and the way things have always been done but this is an entirely different generation; an army made up of people who don’t even remember the Vietnam War so why would you continue to preach outmoded and antiquated ideals?  But again… I’m sorry, I’m trying to see the logic.

As far as all army concerns went this weekend, it was a clusterfuck, but I have stopped stressing about things like that.  I complain about it because I like to complain about everything but if I really thought it was that serious I wouldn’t try to excel the way I do.  I still believe in the institution of the army, even if I don’t believe in the methods.  One day, it will be a new army.  I may not live to see it, but it won’t be long before the baby boomers all die off and change can really happen.

That’s enough about that.

As far as other things are concerned, well, it was interesting.  I had a few people come up and talk to me about certain things and I had to tell them that I didn’t have much to say on the subject.  During one of those lame ass briefings we had, one of the sergeants brought up something I had quite forgotten.  What is the opposite of love?  It isn’t hate, like you might think, but apathy.  When you love something you’re putting in time and energy to cultivate that love.  It’s the same with hatred.  You have to actively hate something.  You have to put force into it, effort, thought.  Hate, like love, can be consuming.  But if you’re completely apathetic, indifferent to a situation or someone or something, you don’t really give a damn at all.  You have no thought for it, no energy, no time, no nothing.  It’s just a blank space in your mind.  A void.  When he mentioned that in his brief, I realised that’s how I felt:  completely apathetic.  I feel that way about a lot of things.  I just don’t care.  It can be one way or another and either way my life would still keep moving in the same direction.

I told another friend that we are who our friends are.  We don’t like to admit it and somehow we like to think that we are different, but it’s not true.  You tend to become the people you hang around.  If you’re lucky, the people with whom you chose to spend time will be positive and uplifting.  If you’re really lucky, you’ll be the driving force and they will imitate you (that is, if you have good qualities), but most of us become clones of our friends.  If your friends are pieces of trash you yourself will become a piece of trash.  It will be difficult to distinguish you from the other, and forever more you will be likened to the crap you hang around with.

It’s not like I’m above this.  I’m human like any other, and I notice that I was picking up the same qualities that I’ve always abhorred in others.  When I look in the mirror I want be okay with myself.  I don’t need justification from other people; I need justification from myself, and if I don’t like myself or what I’m becoming there’s a problem and a change needs to be made.  I explained this and I was surprised that there was such agreement in my statement.  It is what it is and I’m okay with that.  I think it’s unfortunate that many people do not themselves realise this.  I also think it’s sad when you indeed do see the problem but you fail to correct it because you are concerned of what others might think.  In the end, you’re only important to yourself.  You are the one who takes care of yourself.  Yes, we have good friends that will be there when we need them but when it all comes down to it, you have to be able to take care of yourself.

I’m okay with that.  Later on, someone else came up to talk to me about cohesion and stability but I had nothing to add to that conversation.  I agreed that something needs to be done, but I don’t think I’m the one that needs to do it.  There’s being the bigger person and then there’s being a punching bag.  I’m not smart enough to be the former and I’m too smart to be the latter.

I just think that ….. well, who really cares what I think?

After drill, SF and I went to McCormick and Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in DC.  They did their Veteran’s Day special where you get a free meal for serving in the military.  Applebee’s and Subway are doing the same thing on Veteran’s Day, but Applebee’s is common people food and I wouldn’t eat at Subway even if Jesus commanded it.  We invited Maq but she had the kids and wouldn’t come out.  It was nice to hang out after drill to wash away the stresses of the military with several glasses of wine and a mimosa.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t even tired like I usually am after a long drill.  After dinner, I ended up coming home to a Star Trek marathon and a long walk on my treadmill.

I ended the evening with a thought:  he who dies with the most toys still dies.

Another Weekend in the Trenches #5

This weekend I was reminded why I both love and hate the Army as it both loves and hates me.  The Army is a boyfriend who treats me like shit but yet I love him anyway.  He makes false promises and I cling to his every word, waiting for the day that he’ll make good.  I should leave his sorry ass, but I don’t have the strength to.  I think about the good old days, when it was just me and him and how he used to do right by me.  I pretend not to notice how fickle he is and how cruel he can be. Whenever I try to leave him, the Army pulls me back and reminds me why I’m with him in the first place.  He says, “Bitch, you can’t leave me.  We’re in this together forever.”

What can I say?  I love the Army and the Army loves me.

It was just one of those weekends where you really can’t win for losing.  Enter the dreaded MUTA-6, three long agonising days of bullcrap.  Get up Friday morning and fight morning rush hour traffic.  On a normal day, I would have been at work two hours already by the time I arrived at drill.  I had to come early so I can set up the breakfast thing.  This weekend, I felt like saying fuck it.  I offered to do it because I know the supply sergeant has her hands full with other things.  The previous specialist who was in charge of it was a moron and basically wasted all the money we earned.  I hate listening to people complain about how expensive everything is.  There is a simple solution for that:  don’t buy shit.  Or bring your own shit from home.  Get up early and take your ass to 7/11 and pay whatever they charge.  The thing is, do you start bitching at the clerk behind the counter about how expensive the sticky buns are?

I hate the accusing looks I get when people think I’m overcharging so I can pocket the money.  Trust me, the things I want in life cost far more than the forty-seven cents profit I make off a bottle of too sugary juice.  If I could buy a Benz from selling cinnamon buns, maybe you’d have cause for complaint.  I couldn’t even pay my cell phone bill with the pennies we get.  I set the price based on what I would need to buy more.  This isn’t a business and I am not financially or emotionally vested.  The previous specialist used to get suckered by everyone with their cry baby games about the food prices, so she ended up paying for stuff herself.  Sorry, not this chick.  But then, if I miss one day setting up all that crap someone sends me a nasty text message or makes a snide comment, “Hey, where’s the breakfast.”  Some asshole even said to me, “You know, drill weekend is the only time I eat a real breakfast.  You weren’t even here, so I missed breakfast.  Thanks a lot.”

*eyetwitch*

I got rope-a-doped into going to some training that I was not interested in.  Some days I get so pissed at the Army.  I went through the worst experience of my life at basic training, and I didn’t do all of that just so I could drive a truck or fuck around with some electricity.  I know we need soldiers to do that shit, but not me.  Because then you get stuck on that crap and that’s all your known for:  the girl who fixes generators.  Yeah, I don’t think so.

But true to my usual form, I have a way of doing whatever the hell I want to do.  I was feeling rebellious too because I said, “You know what, everybody has been bitched once or twice in their military life, it ain’t gonna kill me to get yelled at.”  I was that prepared.  I didn’t even care and I’m not usually like that.  I might whine and complain, but I usually do what I’m told like a good little slave girl.

It was just too fucking hot to be bothered with all that so I went the way of the wind and ended up having to work on my NCOER.  Here’s another reason why I’m in the Fuck the Army mode.  I never want to hear the acronym NCOER ever again, and yet sadly, I know I cannot escape it.

In things that I’m interested in, I’m truly ambitious.  I want to be the best.  I sit and think of ways of how to get on top.  I motivate myself to do whatever needs to be done so I can come out a winner.  I don’t know where I got that from, but that’s just a central part of me.  With the Army I feel like I’m wasting my time.  I’m here stopping on dimes for nothing.  Balancing shit on my head while juggling live cats in a hat box and nobody is paying attention.  The National Guard and its convoluted promotion system is depressing me.  Here is a place where you may not get promoted based on your merits because there is no place to promote you.

But if you act like an asshole piece of shit, they won’t hesitate to come down on you like a ton of bricks.  So it’s like you get all the punishment but none of the reward. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t and that’s a tough pill to swallow.  I told one of my battles at lunch that I was going to stop giving a damn and she said it would be impossible for me because I’m a natural go-getter and I have that bossy tendency that I can never deny.

So sad.  So true.

On Saturday it was more of the same.  Oppressive heat and mindless wandering around the drill floor, desperate to stay out of the line of fire.  You honestly don’t have anything to do, and you would be at your task if you had one, but they want you to get lost and look busy.  I wonder about the senior enlisted.  Do they even have a clue what is happening.  Yes, they are all busy because they are E6s and E7s.  They have paperwork and other shit to do, and so when they see some E4 just moseying around they get pissed, and rightfully so, but this is their game.  They made the rule that if you’re not a certain rank you can’t do anything.  So task me with something or shut the fuck up.  I spent most of Saturday pretending to be busy, walking around like I was on some mission just so nobody would say, “Hey soldier, you’re not doing shit, why don’t you go alphabetise all the street signs in America.”

I hate that we’re often treated like infants.  Perhaps this applies to some of us, but certainly not all of us.

What made me so mad about Saturday is that we were literally doing nothing.  There were some people doing the driver’s training that was postponed from Friday, but the rest of us were sitting around with our thumbs up our asses scared we would get tasked with some bullshit because they couldn’t think of anything better for us to do.

So with us doing absolutely nothing on Saturday, on Sunday we were exceptionally busy.  On Friday when they realised that driver’s training would not go as planned, they should have bumped up Sunday’s tasks to Friday afternoon, especially since those tasks were not time sensitive.  Our unit poorly manages times and that gets on my nerves to no end.

We did have something important to do Sunday morning and I understand that cannot be put off because it’s based on when certain resources are available, but Sunday afternoon?  Moving shit off trucks and putting other shit on trucks, that can be done any time, so on Friday and Saturday when we were just hanging out, that could have been accomplished.  So that way on Sunday night when it’s time to go home, you don’t have to hold up the whole fucking formation so you can give three people a safety briefing.  Yeah, it was more than three people and I’m exaggerating but these are basic suggestions for a simple win.

But I am just a specialist and therefore mildly retarded and incapable of a sentient thought.

I don’t expect to be released early every time I come to drill.  I don’t expect to be catered to (although I want to be).  I don’t expect everything to magically go right, but it is like more and more as time goes on, this unit seems to slowly fall apart.  I’m sure some sergeant will come up with a good reason as to why things did not progress as planned, but everything has a good reason.

There’s a good reason why I’m bitchy today.  There’s a good reason why the sky is blue.  There’s a good reason why your mom is ugly.

So what?

The only thing that makes the drill weekend bearable is my peers.  I have a good time with these guys.  As long as we can sit around, crack jokes, cry on each other’s shoulders and bitch and rant together, I can get through it.  If these guys weren’t around, I probably would have run screaming from the armoury already.  That’s what I’m going to hang on to when I go to AT this year.

I’m dreading it like a trip to the gyno.  We will be stuck for two miserable, hot, humid weeks in Ft. Pickett, VA.  I’ve never been down there but I ain’t never been to an army base that looks like the Breakers Resort.  I’m sure the beds will be two pieces of toilet paper strung together on a bit of rope.  The bathroom will look like the death scene from Carrie 2:  The Rage.  The food will have me either clogged up for a month or shitting for two weeks straight.  Take your pick.  They both suck.

One of the sergeants basically told me how it’s going to be.  We’re going to get down there, set everything up, have a few training classes, go to the range and then kind of like… nothing.  If we don’t have a mission then we’re basically useless.

Le sigh.

But I swear I really do love this shit and I don’t know why.  I am a battered wife.  The more I get knocked around the more I want to go back.  I put on my uniform and I feel all special and important.  I can’t imagine not wearing it.  I have ten more months left on my contract and it hasn’t even really crossed my mind not to renew.  I’m looking at other options, of course.  But you know what battered women usually do?

They go from one abuser to the next without blinking an eye,  because they don’t know no better.

Another Weekend in the Trenches #4

Yet another drill weekend has come and gone.  This one was slightly special, in that it marked my five year anniversary in the military.  I now have one year remaining on my contract.  If I was contemplating getting out of the army, which I’m really not, my decision would have been firmly made after this awkward weekend.

I will always contend that I love the army and the army loves me, but there are times when I really hate the army.  I think this weekend is one of those times that I just cannot stand being in the army.  I did try to get out of half of this weekend’s drill.  Forget about the fact that I’m drilling on my birthday, but I really needed to finish moving.  I can’t do it this week because I’ll be out of town.  Yes, I know lack of planning and blah blah blah, but since we weren’t scheduled to be doing anything of any significance, I thought it might be easy to split train.  I asked to come in on Friday and help prep for drill, which they always need help, in exchange of having Sunday off.  That did not work.  I found out that it was thanks to a few idiots.  Someone, apparently, decided that rather than going through their chain of command, they would just email the commander directly.  Because he always has time to read emails from junior enlisted soldiers and all of their problems.  Oh well.  It’s done and no sense in complaining about it–except for the fact that I can.

So Saturday started off kind of good, but the army is well known for its ability to go from sugar to shit in 60 seconds.  We had this long ass first formation because someone got promoted.  I would like to discuss how I felt about that, but I won’t because Big Brother is always watching.  Just know that I am perturbed.  Anyway, after the promotion, I felt that we were given clear instructions on what were supposed to be doing that day.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, maybe I heard something wrong.  That could be quite possible because I do happen to zone out when we’re in formation.  My feet always start hurting and then I start noticing the dandruff in back of a certain sergeant’s head and then the horrible smell emanating from another sergeant, who just happens to be a field worker, starts wafting up from the squad behind me and I tend to zone out of whatever is going on.  But I could have sworn I heard very specific instructions.  Like I said, I could be wrong.

The instructions involved manual labour, which I do not do.  I didn’t sit through all these years of college and months and months of military school and investigators prying into my personal life so that I could become a construction worker.  Whenever they start talking about building things, cleaning things, anything that involves illegal immigrant work, I find something better to do.  There’s always something else to volunteer for and I did.  So while everybody else was outside in the hot ass sun pitching tents like the slave trade had suddenly reopened, I was doing office work.  But after lunch, I couldn’t come up with anymore excuses so I had to participate.  So this is where my confusion sets in.  I go outside to see what is going on and I see that they have already put up the tent.  We got these big stupid tents a few months ago and I understood the instructions to be, “put up the tent, put the systems inside the tent, and we’ll go from there.”  Once again, I will admit that I could have heard things wrong.

Nowhere in the instructions did I hear, “Put up the tent.  Move the tent to one side of the parking lot.  Move the tent to the other side of the parking lot.  Move the tent back.  Then dismantle the tent.”

I didn’t hear that, but for some reason that is precisely what happened.  This is because Sergeant Ratchett was in charge.  I’m Sergeant Ratchett is a very nice person outside of uniform, but the day she got that rocker, something must have clicked in her brain because she just became a totally different person.  Oh, don’t get me wrong she has always been one slice short of a fully baked pie, but it’s like someone used a pound of salt, rather than sugar, to half-bake her ass.  Someone told me that she has a problem with black females.  I have not been a party to this.  She tends to treat me with a long-handled stick.  From afar she will issue an instruction if she sees something, but she has never really approached me.  I notice that she does this with several other females, and interestingly enough, it is all the females that will punch her in the face (not literally).  Anyway, I have never met someone is as unintelligent as she is.  Added to her lack of intelligence, you can add no common sense whatsoever, the inability to listen, a complete disregard for others’ opinions and a self-absorbed sense of misguided superiority.  This is the making of a disaster.

I noticed that other sergeants were becoming frustrated with her because she just simply refused to listen to any of their suggestions.  It wasn’t as if they were trying to take command away from her, or undermine her authority.  I don’t think that all.  The two sergeants I observed trying to assist her are not the male chauvinist-you stupid female-let me handle it because I’m a male-type of sergeants.  They are just sergeants who want to get the work done, get it done fast and get it done right.  Apparently, she missed that memo.

So, it is 75 degrees out.  Not very hot, but there is no shade and no cloud cover so after awhile, things just start heating up, plus we were dragging a 500 pound tent from one end of the parking lot to the next.  I don’t know why we were doing this.  In the past, we haven’t had anything to do, we are sometimes given busy work, but this was ridiculous.  I honestly do not think that this is what they had in mind.  But I’m just a low-level idiot, so what do I know.  So, the tent was already up.  Then she wanted to turn the tent around.  We turned the tent around.  She wanted some trailers moved, so the trailers were moved.  Then she wanted the tent back in its original position.  We put the tent back in its original position.  Then she wanted it turned around again.  We turn it around.

After all this is accomplished, another sergeant comes out and says, “Tear it down.  You have 15 minutes.”  I seriously thought he was joking.  He is not really known for his jokes but he was standing with another sergeant who does like to goof off, and so I was like, yeah, he put him up to it.  That is why I did not immediately get to work because I kept waiting for him to be like, “SIKE!” only it never happened.  Many times when I become upset, I go within myself.  I become very cold-minded and I begin plotted death and destruction.  Other times when I become upset, I blow up.  If I choose to blow up, that means I am super-duper pissed off and you should expect some type of violent reaction.

That is how I felt.  If I had had the keys to any of those vehicles back there, I would have run someone over.  I do not like doing things that wastes time, causes unnecessary stress, or is in some way wasteful or useless.  I felt like that whole exercise was completely pointless and I hate feeling like that.  Just because I am lower enlisted, my time is just as valuable as anybody else’s.  I don’t know what it was like for other people, but basic training was one of the worst experiences of my life.  I feel like I did not go through all of that bullshit, heart ache and stress just so I could move a fucking tent around in a parking lot for an afternoon.  If that is the case, stuff me in the back of a fucking connex and ship me off to some farm and I’ll pick fucking fruit for the rest of my life; at least it’ll have more purpose.  Someone will actually eat the goddamn fruit, as opposed to that stupid ass tent that just got folded back up in its gay ass bag to sit on the back of a truck somewhere.

What made me even more irritated is that we had some important briefings to attend and that is the reason for the rushing we did to get the damn tent down.  I do not understand our unit at all.  If we have important briefings, why don’t these fucking briefings occur in the beginning of the day when all troops are present?  Since they are so important.  I feel like the information they gave to us was important but too bad half the class had to leave to go take a PT test.  Yes, the PT is important too, but since you know you have PT in the evening, important shit should come in the beginning of the day.  Moving a fucking tent is not important.  Everything they put out in that brief was important and many of my peers had to get second hand information because they missed it.  Because they spent the first part of the day putting up a goddamn tent, moving a goddamn tent, and then taking down a goddamn tent.

Can you tell I’m really annoyed by the tent?  Don’t be surprised if you find out the tent has been set on fire.

So after the briefing, which lasted until almost 530, everyone of rank disappeared leaving the rest of us standing around like, hmm, what to do next.  There was no final formation, but nobody bothered to tell us that, so we were just standing in formation like assholes.

If it weren’t for the fact that the Mafia was going out to dinner for the May birthday celebration, I would have gone home fucking pissed.

Sunday
I thought I would be exhausted from staying up late Saturday night, but it turned out to be not so bad.  Sunday was not quite as horrible as Saturday, but in another way, it was actually worse.  Allow me to explain.

So, I think I will be officially, and at long fucking last, removed from the section I was in.  I have been begging for this almost since the day it happened four years ago.  I don’t want to actually confirm this until it happens, but just the prospect of finally being moved is enough to make me shit myself.

The task for the day was to do some briefing.  Give us a chance to learn how to research, analyse and brief.  We were all separated into teams and assigned a topic and told to get out there and put together a brief.  So, this is what I really hate about the army sometimes, especially the reserve components.  Reserve and National Guard is different because we’re all bringing something different to the table.  We’re bringing our civilian lives here.  While some of us may be low in rank army wise, that doesn’t mean we’re low on intelligence or low on experience.  There are people in the unit that may just be an E4 but in their civilian job they really are on top.  The army doesn’t take that into account and that really annoys me.  We’ve got all these college educated people and they are treated like incompetent retards because they’re just an E4 or whatever.

Each group had an E6, an E5 and a whole bunch of junior soldiers.  The E6 was basically a figurehead, coming around to make sure that everything going smoothly while the E5 is the one who is actually in charge and the E4s are the ones doing all the work.  Well, my E6 decided that she had more important things to do, but before she disappeared into the wild blue yonder, she came over and assigned who she wanted to be in charge of what.  Okay, great, well, if you want this to be a learning experience we should all work together, and if you want it to be good, you should assign people who actually know what they’re doing to do the job.  But I guess I’m making too much sense.   Then she left and she probably didn’t even give a damn because I never saw her again.  Ever.  For the rest of the day.

We start researching and this is the sort of thing I really get into.  History is my favourite subject.  Geography and culture is right behind.  I get a kick out of researching and analysing.  I could have been there all day long looking up stuff, reading facts and figures, getting down into the most minute details, and just be way off topic.  That’s what happens when I work on something I enjoy.  My personality flaw is that I like to take charge because I am a perfectionist.  I don’t like working in teams because I want to do things perfectly and I want to labour over every little detail and just take my time like I’m caring for an infant.  Right away, the sergeant in charge was like, “You’re not going to be here writing a dissertation.”  Okay, fine, I understand we only have like 10 minutes to brief.  I feel like you can’t even introduce the topic in ten minutes, but I’ll get over it.

Next I wanted to help put the brief together, but since our absentee E6 already assigned someone to do it, he did not want my help, or anybody’s help, for that matter.  He did everything.  Fine.  What do I do when people do not do what I want them to?  I leave.  I wrote my section and handed in my research, then I left to go goof off.  This is why I did not do well in college.  I have an attention span problem.  If I am not being properly tended like how you have to do with small children, I get bored and start goofing off.  I am capable of working, but not capable of sitting around watching someone else work, especially when I want to work.

I went outside to talk with SGM.  He and I had a very long, very intense discussion about my military career.  He really gave me some superb information and some excellent advice, but more on that later.

I go back to the computer room to see if anything needs to be done.  I’m pretty much told that my assistance is not required.  So I go sit down and goof off on Facebook for a little while and then it is our turn to brief.  I didn’t even get a chance to look at our brief before we went into the room.  I guess it’s a good thing that I hadn’t because I would have shit myself and refused to go in there.  First of all, I do this for a living.  So I really do know what I’m doing.  My job is nothing but writing and briefs and reports and packages and all kinds of WRITTEN material.  I edit and WRITE, WRITE and edit for a living.  I’ve been doing it for a very long time, so I kind of know what I’m doing, but apparently that meant absolutely nothing.  When I saw our brief for the very first time I was like, Oh my God.  What the hell?

*sigh*

The briefing begins and it is nothing but a train wreck from the beginning.  Not only did we crash and burn, but we crashed, burned, detonated on impact, exploded, disintegrated into tiny little particles, and then those particles were vapourised.

That is how bad it was.  That was just the actual slideshow presentation, that wasn’t even the actual presenters.  Some of us haven’t had as much experience as others, so I am not even going to say anything about that.  The one person in our group who hasn’t had much experience in briefing was WAAAAAAAY better than the two people who are supposed to be experienced professionals.  At least when she got up there, she wasn’t all, “Uhm… yeah, uhm….er… yeah, uhm, cuz…. uhm….”  At least when she got up there, she stood at parade rest, had some kind of military bearing about her and looked like a normal human being instead of looking like a fucking jackass, like, well, I won’t be naming any names.  But let’s just say he was the one the E6 wanted to be in charge of putting the whole thing together.  *eyeroll*

We didn’t even get halfway through our presentation before we were told to stop, shut the hell up and get the fuck out.  They wanted us to redo our whole slide show presentation, get a fucking clue and let’s try that again.  I was so humiliated.  I don’t like being part of things that suck.  If I make a mistake or do something dumb, then I want it to be the reason I fail.  I don’t want to fail because someone else failed.  That is why I dislike working in groups.  You have to deal with losers.

So, our failure, does it change anything?  No, it doesn’t.  When we go back to work on our presentation, do I get to assist and point out a few things that need correcting?  No.  The person who put that shitty abomination of a brief together wanted to blame everybody else.  Then he said, “Oh, well they just wanted to be extra picky about everything.”  No, they had valid reasons.  Our presentation looked like one of my blog posts.  My blog posts are notoriously long-winded and that is the reason why they do not make good power point presentations, which are supposed to be short and fucking sweet.  Not looking like the damn Constitution.  Then the gay ass graphics.  No cover page.  Didn’t even bother putting our names on it.  No date.  No nothing.  It was just balls.

We go back in to do our brief again and it was a little bit better, but they had to end it with a fucking lame ass graphic on the very last page.  I don’t know who did it, but I never saw it so I couldn’t tell them that it was a bad idea.  What happened?  We got ate up for it.  *eyeroll*

Except for my deep discussion with SGM and going out with the Mafia and having 7 dinner parties in a row with my friends for my birthday, everything about this weekend sucked.  I could have done without all that.  Don’t be surprised when I don’t show up for June and you find out I ran away to Canada.

The end.

Another Weekend in the Trenches #2

Another drill weekend bites the dust.  The weekend actually didn’t start off as horribly as they usually do, despite the fact that we are now being subjected to the brutal MUTA-6 for the rest of the year.  This means that we will have THREE full drill days as opposed to the MUTA-4 that is only Saturday and Sunday.   All of this to be followed up by an unending drill weekend that will last approximately 12 whole months plus three extra months to make sure we haven’t turned psychotic.  Okay, you have no idea what I’m talking about, but I wouldn’t be too concerned.  It will become all too clear very soon.   

We got some new equipment this weekend and some instructors came to teach us how to use the crap.  It was another one of those senseless military classes where they instructors are loads smarter than you are, and they’re just talking at you with all these numbers and acronyms that are virtually meaningless.  In the military, civillian instructors are the equivalent of having your grandparents come to visit.  Not the grandparents that you adore, that let you eat sweets and stay up late when you go to visit, but the other set of grandparents that live very far away and you don’t know them that well.  They’re the ones that send you horrid sweaters at Christmas.  Because they are grandparents, you can’t be rude to them, even though you don’t really like them. 

Friday morning we had a memorial for the soldier that committed suicide.  The memorial was depressing, as memorials usually are, especially for someone who has committed suicide.  It was heartbreaking to listen to his wife and his parents talk about the man.  I would think that at a time like this, all they want is to be left alone.  Or maybe they really do appreciate the outpouring of concern and support.  We did a military roll call along with the playing of Taps.  Taps is so morose.  Every time I hear it I immediatley want to shoot myself because this dark cloud of misery just appears out of nowhere.  On military bases, they usually play it around 9PM, and when I was in Basic, we would get in bed around that time and I could hear Taps playing in the distance.  Basic training was so brutal for me that every time I heard that song I hoped that I wouldn’t wake up the next day to face whatever horror would present itself.

All of the females were crying and the males were trying hard to be tough.  Of course, me being the emotionless rock that I am, sat there dry eyed, fuming because they passed out little cards with the soldier’s name on it along with Psalm 23.  On the front of the card was a depiction of a VERY white Jesus.  This is just wrong on so many levels.  As a Muslim, I am opposed to the depiction of any of the prophets for this precise reason.  I am unsure of what Jesus might have looked like but I highly doubt that he had silken, flowing flaxen hair, perfectly coiffed like he just stepped out of the Hair Cuttery.  This wasn’t the regular white Jesus that you see in most churches, this Jesus was SUPER WHITE.  Frosted blonde hair, blue eyes and pale, pale white skin.  I found it offensive, but some guy’s memorial service is not the place to raise a hue and cry over Sweet Valley Jesus. 

The rest of Friday saw me trying to stay awake.  When I am not  interested in something, my brain just checks out of reality.  My eyes might be open, but inside I’m asleep or off on another planet.  After a coma-inducing Powerpoint presentation (all military presentations are conducted in Powerpoint.  I think it’s a regulation or something), I had to subject myself to another class of worthy of REM sleep, but this time in front of the computer, for one of those lame ass military courses that is absolutely mandatory.  This time it’s the Army Accident Avoidance Course. 

You know, I love the Army. I really do, but it is so dated and so … just… stupid… sometimes.  I must take an online class called the Army Accident Avoidance Course.  It’s basically the class you have to take in order to get your driver license in the real world.  It’s all about how you shouldn’t drink and drive, and doing proper maintenance on your vehicle before you go on a drive, and not speeding and stuff like that.  Seriously?  I mean seriously.  If you don’t know any of these things before you get behind the wheel of a car, well, I don’t know what to say to that.  I wonder if the Army actually considers how many lives it thinks it’s saving by forcing us to take an hour long online course about having a buddy driver.  I would be interested in knowing. 

Because we were feeling so good on Friday, a group of us ensigns from the Mafia decided to have dinner at Sakura’s afterwards.  The one thing I really like about the army is the camraderie and friendship you build up with your fellow soldiers. I know that sounds terribly gay, but I’m serious.  You meet so many random people, people from all different walks of life when you join the army.  These might not even be people that you would normally be friends with in the outside world, but because you have that tacky ass uniform bringing you together, somehow it just seems to work. 

I feel there are certain new alliances forming within the Mafia though.  Our youngest and newest member still has a lot to learn about the facts of life, but it seems the more we try to teach her, the harder her head gets.  My mother used to say that a hard head made a soft behind, and I think in her case, her ass must be very soft because she is on another planet sometimes.  I must remind myself often that I cannot control other people’s lives, no matter how much I want to.  I don’t want to disconnect myself from her like I did The Other One because unlike The Other One, this girl is not negative.  I just decided that I don’t want to have negative people around me.  Then sometimes it’s like I’m caught in the middle of these unusual dynamics.  Sometimes I think people try hard to be something they are not for no reason at all.  We don’t have to be bed buddies, but I think we should get along, especially since the differences we have are so petty, but I think this is the mark of maturity and many of us still have a lot of growing up to do, even those that think they are so mature.

Saturday saw me doing manual labour. I don’t know what it is about the army and this whole manual labour thing, but obviously someone didn’t get the memo that I am not a construction worker.  Along with this new equipment came a tent, and we had to put it up just so we could prove that we know how to put up a tent.  Why can’t we just hire a caterer for that?  (I so belong in the Army, don’t I?)  Then after we put up the tent, I had to stand around to listen to another boring, overly technical highly acronym-ed presentation.  It was about voltage and network cables, or something.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t paying much attention, not because I wasn’t interested (and I really wasn’t) but because I did not understand anything.  The instructor was going on so quickly about power supplies and infrared beams or whatever, that I just got lost and zoned out.

By the time Sunday rolled around, I was prepared to chalk this drill weekend up to a high note.  Some drill weekends can be rough, especially the long 3-day drills where  we sit around and stare at each other for 72 hours.  We had more of the extra boring highly technical presentations, and some of them involving standing outside in the cold behind a horrid smelling noisy generator while some guy rattled off voltage numbers and whatnot at us.  After the presentations, we had to break down all the crap that we put up, including that bloody tent.  Look, I’ll say it again, I’m just not in the mood for construction work.  I didn’t join the army to dig holes, put up tents or lay bricks. 

After that was complete, it’s time for the AAR, the After Action Review.  Basically, this is the army’s way of forcing you to go over what you just went through, but under the pretense that you’ll be offering suggestions to make the next time much better.  I find these things to be tedious and useless.  Nothing we have ever put in an AAR has ever come to fruition.  Then the army has regulations on how the AAR must be conducted, even regulated what comments can go in a report.  I guess the army has never heard of the First Amendment. 

The focus of the AAR was the instructors, but as I mentioned earlier civillian instructors are just like those annoying grandparents.  Our senior leaders, reminded us that we had to be polite.  Lo and behold, the instructors actually sat in the room with us, so if we had any valid complaints we had to carefully word them in a politically correct manner so that it doesn’t even actually sound like a complaint or criticism.  Every time anybody had a criticism, even a politcally correct one, the instructor chimed in with “why things had to be the way they were.”  It sounded like excuses to me.

For the most part, I found the instructors to be highly competent and informative; their method of instruction was not the best, in my opinion.  There, I said it.  The stuff they were attempting to teach me is only peripheral to the job I signed up to do in the army.  I am not technical.  I am not computer literate (other than iTunes and Facebook).  I’m not electrician.  I don’t even do math well.  These instructors came in with their fancy advanced technical degrees and tried to talk to me as if I’m on their level.  All I learned was how to sleep standing up with my eyes open. 

The only training I benefited from was the training I received that actually corresponds to the job I’m doing in the army.  The rest of that mumbo jumbo, was exactly that, mumbo jumbo.  Of course, I cannot say this in the AAR, so I said nothing.  That is usually how I choose to carry myself in the Army.  I know it’s all political and whatnot, but the politics of everything is not my concern.  I joined the Army for my own personal reasons and not for everyone else’s.  I feel that if I’m not able to communicate in the way I need to communicate, than I just don’t say anything at all.  Cleaning up my words so as not to offend someone’s precious feelings, well, that doesn’t sit well with me because I don’t want you to mistake what I’m actually trying to say.

But that’s not my biggest complaint about the AAR. 

Let’s just discuss how once again I find myself ensnared by the ever odious Zap Brannigan.  At the present moment, I do not know how precisely to describe this guy, only that he is incredibly annoying and difficult to work with.  The sad part is that I could have been friends with this guy but we have rank and his idiocy separating us.  You know I never tolerate well those I consider to be beneath me.  I was forced to become his “assistant” for the AAR.  His assistance meant that he wanted me to write everything on the chalkboard so that he could write it on paper later.

How moronic is that.  Why don’t you just have me write it on paper and forget the chalkboard?  I’ll write while you conduct the AAR.  He didn’t even so much as conduct the AAR as he tried to steer it and reign over it.  The army has a particular way in which it likes things to be done.  The Army does not like improvisation.  This guy wants to debate every single compliment and criticism, formally discuss each topic, commend random soldiers for doing the most inane tasks and laud the instructors for moving heaven and earth while doing a quadruple salchow.

No, he who conducts the AAR is supposed to make sure that you have three sustains and three improves.  You’re also supposed to make sure the soldiers stay on topic and politically correct.  There is no DISCUSSION.  This is not a seminar!  I’m also your assistant, she who records everything on the chalkboard.  I don’t need you to explain everything to me, even if I don’t understand.  All I need to know is what to write on the board so you can write it on your stupid little paper. 

I hate being linked with him.  He is a man of passable intelligence who tries to pump himself up to make it appear that he’s smarter than he actually is by using bloated 10 dollar words out of context.  Because he seems to have some random fixation on me, he always, always selects me for every passing task.  It’s not that I’m complaining about working, because I’ll do the work but I think he fails to realise that there are other soldiers of my rank who are also quite capable of getting the job done.  Then he tells me, “It’s because you’re such an outstanding soldier that I really want to highlight that.  I think you exemplify what the Army is trying to capture, a depiction of a soldier who really is going above and beyond the call of duty with your significant intelligence and expressive way of handling the situation.”

Did that make sense?

No, of course it didn’t, but this is how he talks.

But I must remember that when I put on the uniform, my age, experience and intelligence do not matter.  Nothing matters but rank.  So I am forced to swallow my own bile and jump to it.  I had to stand up there during his entire long-winded AAR, forcing myelf to remain placid even though my blood was on fire.  All I wanted to do was take that stupid piece of chalk and rub it into his face.  I am told that my face is very expressive and when I disdain something, you can really tell.  I couldn’t even look out into the audience because my friends’ expressions were making me even more upset because they were ALL LAUGHING AT ME BECAUSE THEY KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE THIS GUY!!!

Ugh.

And on that note, that is precisely how drill ended.  With my blood pressure up and my hair falling out.