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Stupid again, staying up too late
Jun. 27th, 2003 01:50 amI'll write this briefly, since I really should go to bed, but I promised. The reason I want to go back t the base is that we've broken Distance with our commanders. That's Distance with a capital D. It's a semi-official term for the distance between a commander and her soldiers. It's about her being an evil robot who never smiles and exists only to bark orders at you, yell, time, and punish you. It's about her being the person you hate and curse and are scared of for the duration of the course, because she holds the power to "drop and give my twenty!" and make you walk around with a helmet all day long and make you roll in the sand and spend the weekend at the base, or at least leave a couple of hours late. She never jokes. She never smiles. She never shows any kind of sympathy. Never.
We knew they'd break the Distance before the end of the course, and we felt it loosen up during the last two weeks. We started getting benefits, and started seeing them as human beings when they interrupted classes we were giving out, but we still weren't allowed to talk back. Occasionally we caught one of them suppressing a smile and quickly turning around to hide it. We stopped hating them and began admiring them, after we got out of the initial shock of reporting to a 20-year-old. But still, most of the time they were evil.
On Tuesday they were especially mean. I don't know what it was, but they made us do about a thousand push-ups before lunch, on the burning road, making us yell how far we are from the end, and giving us shorter times to do everything, and basically ranting about how bad we are. At 22:15 one commander came and told us to go back to the tent area for our nightly briefing, and dropped us, and yelled at us some more. And we're all "damn, we should have been more disciplined today, now they're gonna take away our benefits and tighten the noose some more--"
And out of the tents saunter the two other commanders and the Evil Bitch, with sunglasses on their heads, wearing their hair down, holding cigarettes and a radio tape. We stood and gaped for about a minute until they all broke into huge, beautiful smiles, and laughed, "snap out of it! We're breaking Distance."
Oh, what a beautiful moment. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I one second this person whom you looked up to, and admired, and feared and hated, becomes the person who looked after you for the past two and a half months, your mother, your sister, your friend--hell, a woman. And they are so incredibly sweet! They ran up to us and hugged us and said they were going to keep up the wall until the last day but they simply couldn't take it anymore, that they love us and they're proud of us and oh, how we wanted to mae them proud! We brought out food and they took us into their office and we mimicked and laughed at them and they mimicked and laughed at us, and we went through every private joke we thought they didn't know, and they told us all their jokes about us. We talked about every single thing that went on in the course through both our points of view, until 3:30 in the morning. We called them by their fucking names.
Man, it's incredible. And two of them are being released in two weeks, and damn, but I want to spend every last moment that I can with them. It's the oddest kind of hero worship you've heard of. Man. I just... I just want to see them smile.
So no, going back's not bad at all :-) See you as a corporal!
We knew they'd break the Distance before the end of the course, and we felt it loosen up during the last two weeks. We started getting benefits, and started seeing them as human beings when they interrupted classes we were giving out, but we still weren't allowed to talk back. Occasionally we caught one of them suppressing a smile and quickly turning around to hide it. We stopped hating them and began admiring them, after we got out of the initial shock of reporting to a 20-year-old. But still, most of the time they were evil.
On Tuesday they were especially mean. I don't know what it was, but they made us do about a thousand push-ups before lunch, on the burning road, making us yell how far we are from the end, and giving us shorter times to do everything, and basically ranting about how bad we are. At 22:15 one commander came and told us to go back to the tent area for our nightly briefing, and dropped us, and yelled at us some more. And we're all "damn, we should have been more disciplined today, now they're gonna take away our benefits and tighten the noose some more--"
And out of the tents saunter the two other commanders and the Evil Bitch, with sunglasses on their heads, wearing their hair down, holding cigarettes and a radio tape. We stood and gaped for about a minute until they all broke into huge, beautiful smiles, and laughed, "snap out of it! We're breaking Distance."
Oh, what a beautiful moment. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I one second this person whom you looked up to, and admired, and feared and hated, becomes the person who looked after you for the past two and a half months, your mother, your sister, your friend--hell, a woman. And they are so incredibly sweet! They ran up to us and hugged us and said they were going to keep up the wall until the last day but they simply couldn't take it anymore, that they love us and they're proud of us and oh, how we wanted to mae them proud! We brought out food and they took us into their office and we mimicked and laughed at them and they mimicked and laughed at us, and we went through every private joke we thought they didn't know, and they told us all their jokes about us. We talked about every single thing that went on in the course through both our points of view, until 3:30 in the morning. We called them by their fucking names.
Man, it's incredible. And two of them are being released in two weeks, and damn, but I want to spend every last moment that I can with them. It's the oddest kind of hero worship you've heard of. Man. I just... I just want to see them smile.
So no, going back's not bad at all :-) See you as a corporal!
