Monday, November 24, 2014

An Officer and a Gentleman - Part 2

Every OCS Class is assigned a class officer, a class Chief Petty Officer and a class Drill Instructor.  Most of the class officers are put there to rot, they don't do much and it is not a good assignment in terms of advancement.  Our class Officer, a Lieutenant, was no exception.  I really have no idea what he did.  We only sporadically saw him.  He threatened to not let me graduate because I needed my wisdom teeth removed.  Luckily, someone intervened.  He also called me Wilson throughout the entire 13 weeks I was there.  I didn't even look like the guy named Wilson in our class.  Even at graduation, when I rendered my final salute to him, he saluted back and said something along the lines of "Well you made it, Wilson"  I fired back "Smith, Sir"  and walked off.

The class Chief Petty Officer was Senior Chief Lucas.  I loved that hard charging Filipino.  He had a really heavy accent but was super squared away.  He was responsible for all the administration, with a 50+ class it was a huge job, but he never missed a beat.  I like to think he was the one who talked some sense into the Class Officer and let me graduate on time.

Finally, the man we would see the most, and genuinely come to love and admire was our class drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Lewis.  Unlike the class officers, they only picked the best Marines to come to OCS and most of them made rank.  Most of the other drill instructors were Gunnery Sergeants, but Staff Sergeant Lewis was one paygrade lower.  However, I am sure he picked up the next rank quite quickly.  I think he was Haitian, he did not have an accent and he was a very fit man.  He was slightly on the shorter and stockier side, but definitely a force to be reckoned with.

One of my first memories of SSgt Lewis was when he was teaching our entire class how to iron.  There were almost 60 of us, crammed into this small room sitting indian style.  Here is this ripped up guy, showing us how to iron, and doing it in the manliest way possible.  Every move he made was, to quote the man, "quick and vicious"!  I didn't know you could be quick and vicious while ironing, but he somehow made it so.  I half expected him to put the iron out on his tongue!  Then something very awkward happened.  One of the girls in the class had been raising her hand for awhile and finally SSgt Lewis had enough.  Just like with everything else, there is a specific procedure for asking a question.  Something along the lines of "This Officer Candidate requests to ask the Class Drill Instructor, Staff Sergeant Lewis a question."  The Drill Instructor would typically reply with a succinct "What" or "Spit it out"  Pronouns were strictly forbidden, there was no I or me,  but the best part was if you called SSgt Lewis "you" by accident.  He would then say "what the hell do I look like, a female sheep"? I thought this was a clever retort.  This girl is having all sorts of trouble getting her question out, each time that she has to restart she would get even more flustered and fumble some more.  Finally, on the verge of tears, she simply shouts out "This Officer Candidate needs to go to the head to change her tampon"   I don't think any of us were expecting anything like this!  Certainly not SSgt Lewis, who is still wielding the iron.  He just turned away and motioned for her to leave the room!

Mail call was always an interesting experience.  We would all gather in the hallway (passageway) in the dorm area, and SSGT Lewis would have this enormous stack of mail.  He would call your name, and hand your piece of mail to the "mail body"  You would run up as fast as you possibly could, then clap both your hands onto the mail, quickly and viciously!  If it was an envelope you could open it up at your leisure.  However, if it was a package it had to be opened up in front of everyone to ensure there was no contraband.  If you received candy, you had 30 seconds to eat it all, regardless of the quantity.  One guy's mom sent enough full size Snickers bars so that we could all have one.  By this time SSgt Lewis was starting to go a little easier on us, so he let us all have one, but it was done with orders as to when we could unwrap, take the first bite, swallow etc.  Another guy had a bit of a prankster for a girlfriend.  She sent him what appeared to be a big bag of Starburst.  In fact, it was a large ziploc bag filled mostly with gravel and a few Starburst.  So,  SSgt Lewis instructed him to eat the starburst, and indeed he tried.  Finally, SSgt Lewis noted that he wasn't swallowing.  He barked at him and asked why he wasn't swallowing, the guy through a mouthful of gravel remarked that "Its gravel, Sir"  This was one of the few times we saw SSgt Lewis chuckle as he told him to spit it out!

Friday, November 21, 2014

An Officer and a Gentleman - Part 1 The First Week

I first saw this movie when I was pretty young. My favorite part was when Richard Gere fights his drill instructor. I didn't see it again until after I had gone through OCS, and realized that they had taken quite a bit of poetic license with it. The other thing I did not remember was the very graphic sex scenes. I had just started seeing a young lady and it was quite awkward choosing this as a movie to watch together. Lots of awkward silence.

Officer Candidate School was an interesting experience. I would never want to do it again, but I am glad I went through the experience. Here is what I can remember:

The school is 13 weeks long and used to be in Pensacola, FL. They have moved it to Newport RI now. The first day is admin day, but they make it as stressful as possible. I made the mistake of checking in quite early. The first thing that happens is you get yelled at by upperclassmen. The only difference between them and you is that they have been there for about 10 weeks longer, but they are wearing uniforms and yelling at you. I think they were going extra loud on me because I was there first one to check in so they had plenty of rage. They made me take off my shoes and pull the laces out. They then had me relace them and constantly yelled "Inboard over outboard" which I eventually understood as how to lace up the shoes with a specific lace going over another one. Of course, they don't tell you this, they simply make you do it over and over until you finally get it right. Everytime they yell at you, you have to yell back. Either "Yes Sir/Ma'am" if it is a question of "Aye Sir/Ma'am" if it is a command. No matter how loudly you yell, you are told to yell louder. You have to acknowledge each time they say "louder" with an "Aye Sir" Of course it is not called yelling, it called "being ballistic" I have no idea where this came from, but for the next 13 weeks we were constantly told to be more ballistic.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, the two things I remember the most was the chow hall and uniform issue. You don't get your official uniforms until near the end of the week, for the entire first week you wear what are referred to as poopy greens. You are issued a pair of pants and a WWII style helmet painted bright silver. The helmet is referred to as a chrome dome. You also have to march around with a canteen everywhere you go. The funniest part about the poopy green pants is that there is no effort to try to give you a pair that fits. Indeed the upperclass men seemed to delight in giving you the wrong size. The entire process takes about 15 seconds, you march over to this giant closet and they just pull whatever they feel like off the shelf and give it to you. I was fortunate though. I was issued a pair that must have been a 46 inch waist, they looked extremely comical but I could just adjust my belt to stop them falling off. Many of my classmates got issued pairs that were far too tight.

The chow hall procedure was something else. For the next 11 weeks every meal was the same way. Your entire class of about 50 people marches to the chow hall four abreast. You halt outside the building. Your class leader then gives the following instruction "Class 28-01" (We were the 28th class of year 2001), upon receiving the command march, you will halfstep up the ladder-well execute an immediate column left and form up outside the door" Everyone then yells back "Aye Section Leader" If the section leader messes up any of the command, you get to yell back "As you were Section Leader". The Section Leader then shouts, "Ready" at which point everyone inhales very sharply and as balistically as you can inhale. This is then followed by "March" at which time everyone yells "Kill" and marches up the stairs. You are then ordered to "adjust" which means making sure your uniform is squared away. The Section leader then yells "Door Body off the rear". Since we marched in descending height order, the door body is usually the smallest person. Our door body was this small lesbian, before you were allowed to be a lesbian. Once we were allowed off base on weekends, her "aunt" would come visit her. The door body's job is to cup there hand around their head and peer into the chow hall to see if there is another class already waiting in line. If there is, the section leader would yell for the "knowledge body" This person stays in line, but has to recite key Navy knowledge to the group while waiting. Things like general orders of a sentry or code of conduct. Think of someone shouting "I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist." and so on. After a few minutes of this, the Section Leader will order the door body to report the status of the chow hall deck. If the deck is clear, you enter.

You enter the chow hall, one at a time, following the person immediately in front of you. As you cross the threshhold, you stomp your foot on the metal plate at the bottom of the doorway and shout out what number you are. So the first person shouts "zero-one" followed by "zero-two" and so on. Also, you don't get to use regular numbers like thirteen or twenty-five. Rather you would say "one-three" for 13. Inevitably someone screws it up and you have to go outside as an entire class and start all over. Once you enter you form two lines and stand as close as you possibly can to the person in front of you, affectionately designated as "nut to butt". One at a time, you walk forward to a giant stack of trays, you then slam your hands down as hard as you possibly can on the trays and grab one. After the first week you get regular cutlery, but for the first week you only get an oversized spoon, referred to as your "war spoon" You then get whatever they happen to be serving, and hopefully it is something that lends itself to an oversized spoon. Once you have your food, you proceed to your table. You then put your tray on the table, and stand at attention while reading from this pocket sized notebook that you are issued. You have to hold the notebook at arms length with your arm straight out and parralel to the deck (floor). Once the last person has their meal, the class is ordered to sit all at the same time. The worst part was if you sat near one of the legs for the table, because you were not allowed to straddle it. You had to have both feet on the same side of the table leg. There is no talking. The section leader will then order people to pray at will and then you begin your meal.

Even this is extremely regulated. Your two glasses of water must be touching each other and touching the top right corner of your tray. On occasion, the drill instructors would march right down the center of the table and if your glasses were not properly "grounded" he would proceed to kick your drink onto your shipmate. Sometimes entire trays of food would be sent flying. When you were eating, you would snap your head down to look at the food, take your war spoon and try to get a reasonable bite. Once you had the bite, you had to snap your head up and stare straight ahead. It was only then that you were allowed to chew. This procedure was repeated for every bite. The best part was that you were on a strict 20 minute schedule, the Section Leader is the only individual authorized to wear a watch. Every five minutes the section leader would raise his hand. At that point you swallowed whatever food you had in your mouth. The Section Leader would insure everyone was looking at him and then would proceed to slam his hand down onto the table three times as loundly as he could. He would then follow up, ballistically, shouting "Class 28-01, this is your one-five minute warning" And we would all shout out "Aye Section Leader." There are multiple classes all eating at the same time, so every minute or so, someone is pounding on the table and calling out warnings. You get a warning at 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes and 1 minute. The 1 minute warning is stated as "This is your immediate warning"

Clearing your tray is regimented as well, the entire class is given the following instructions. "Prepare to ground glasses on tray" at which point you put your glasses on the tray. Then everyone is ordered to stand. Finally, you grab your tray, as a class, and march to the scullery to turn in your tray. Meals were always scary because lots of drill instructors were present and you never knew who might mess with you. Sometimes, if the class screwed up enough, you were taken outside and ordered to exercise.

You don't actually meet your drill instructor for the first few days. You only interact with upperclassmen. While they can yell at you, they can't order you to exercise. Also, the first week you live in this big open bay. After week 1, you move into 4 person dorm rooms. The first time we met our drill instructor was another great time. We had checked in on Sunday, and I think it was Wednesday morning when our drill instructor showed up. Except it wasn't just him. It was every single drill instructor, probably 8 or 10 of them. They all came running and yelling into our squad bay at 5 am like a pack of wild dogs. At any given time you might have 4 or 5 of them screaming at you, ordering you around. One of them climbed up on these large metal lockers we had to store our clothes, probably 6 feet high or so. The Drill instructors order you to get dressed, but you have to follow their exact sequence, which might mean putting on your left sock, then your shirt, then perhaps your pants, followed by your left shoe and finally your right sock and shoe. They are also tearing around the place pulling sheets off the racks and causing mayhem. From that point on, your drill instructor is never far away and you are in constant danger of screwing up and doing calithenics whereever you happen to be. Their favorite is to take you out to the sandpits to exercise. We affectionately called these the SUYA for Sand Up Your A$$. My favorite time was we had to march around with our mattresses, then proceed to the SUYA, do a ton of calithenics, fill our pockets with sand, bring the sand into our living spaces and dump the sand out, and of course clean it up.

At the end of the week, on Friday, you transition from "Indoctrination Candidate" to "Officer Candidate". They call that day "Black Friday" It all starts off with an inspection. They bring in a bunch of senior officers to inspect your bed (rack) and locker. Inspection is a loose term, really they just come in and throw your stuff everywhere. They then ask you a bunch of questions, whatever you answer is wrong, and they tell you that you will never make it. Once that is done, you have to jam all your stuff into a big green bag called a "sea bag". Though the bag is equipped with straps you are not allowed to use them. Rather, you must bear hug your bag, as you march to the new living spaces. It takes forever because you are constantly doing exercises and standing around with this bag in a very uncomfortable position.

Once you get to the new dorms there is an epic PT Session. The drill instructor marches you all over the two floors of the dorms, doing countless push-ups, leg-lifts, straddle hops (jumping jacks) and so on. What happens next is awesome though. Just when you think you can't do anything else, the drill instructor orders you out of the dorm to presumably do more exercises in the sand pit. However, all of the senior classes are there. They are applauding and handing out water bottles. Then they welcome you to the regiment and even put on a skit for you. You instantly feel like you belong, it is quite touching. More importantly, the drill instructors are gone, it is the first time in a week when you are allowed to laugh and smile. It is only a small break, but it couldn't come at a better time.

The Return of the Load

The Load just put up some quality posts, so it motivated me to write one. November seems to have flown by, I can't believe this is my first post for the month. A couple of weeks ago, on Veteran's day, I went to my daughter's school for career day. I was speaking to 5th and 6th graders. It was an interesting time. The whole thing kicked off with a player from the Redskins. He kind of rambled all over the place about how tough it is to make it, how he nearly failed out of high school and his plan to open a high end lounge in NYC. The kids seemed to enjoy it though. After his speech, we rotated from classroom to classroom. We had a 15 minute block in each classroom to talk about what we did. Some of the highlights:

1. Every kid who had a familiy member or friend that was in the military asked me if I knew the person. Often they would just give me the first name too, so on a couple of occasions if they asked me if I knew "Joe" or "John" I could honestly say I did. However, I am pretty sure it was not the same person. Sometimes they would even ask if I knew someone that had served in the Vietnam war and had left the military 30 years ago.

2. I should have planned out what I was going to say a bit more. Most of the time, they started in with questions almost immediately. They all wanted to know about my time in Afghanistan and whether I had shot anyone. Unfortunately, my time over there wasn't that glamorous. They also wanted to know if I had been shot at. Technically, I had been, but the story is not that exciting. During our first couple of days we had a car bomb go off near the main gate and later that day we were ordered into the bunkers. We found out that we were ordered into the bunkers because two landowners near the base were having a dispute and firing rounds at each other. Some of these rounds were landing inside the base. The funniest part about all of this is that we hadn't been issued ammunition yet. So there were a bunch of us, in the military, who were outgunned by the local poplace! I had been in the gym when the car bomb went off. I was there with some Army guys that were part of the quick reaction force or QRF. These are the guys who are on call to respond to immediate threats. The bomb goes off and these guys gear up and start running to the front gate. I ran with them, not really thinking, for a few steps, until I realized that I didn't have my body armor on or any ammunition. So I went back to the gym.

I did get two injuries while over there, both minor, both sort of funny. The first one (I have previously written about) was when I was running the fence line at a base near the Pakistani border. Some local kids were running with me and we were having a great time. At least I thought we were. One of them decided it would be fun to throw a rock at me. It was a hell of a throw because he cleared the fence and hit me square on the dome while I was running. They all scattered after that. The special forces medic who checked me out afterwards told me that I should have shot the kids. I am pretty sure I would be in the brig if I had. The second injury happened during a heated volleball game. We weren't outside, Top Gun style. Rather, it was inside a gym. The court wasn't exactly regulation, and just beyond the out-line was a wall. I was going for a hot, did not keep my bearings and ran right into the wall. My glasses cut into my face and there was a fair amount of blood.

3. It was interesting what the kids focused on. In one class, I mentioned briefly that one of the things we do is prepare wills for people. The entire rest of the class was lots of questions about how specific you can be in your will (like can you specify what music is played at your funeral and what dance people have to do). I liked this question because it assumed that there would be dancing at the funeral. I then talked to them about assets that pass outside of probate and the ability for the surviving spouse to renounce the will if he/she is not happy with the share left to him or her. Personally, I find drafting wills to be one of the more boring things that we do, but these kids couldn't get enough of it.

4. I got to meet Silvio's older brother! Some interesting things about this guy, he too was the biggest kid in class and had even more hair than Silvio. It must have been shoulder length, pretty unkempt as well. It was a relatively cold day and he was wearing shorts and a vest, not as outlandishly colored as Silvio's but still pretty good. My favorite part was that I began my little speech and he immediately interrupted me and told me to write my name on the board. I was hoping he would have some bizarre questions, but he never followed up. He was just there to enforce the rules.

5. I couldn't be 100% honest, or at least I didn't feel it was appropriate. When they asked about what kind of cases I worked on, I left out the ones that we do the most - child pornography and sexual assault. I can only imagine the flak the school would get into if I had opened that can of worms. They did have a ton of questions about espionage and treason, but we don't get too many of those cases, fortunately. I wouldn't mind trying a case like that, although it would likely be a lot of work because of classified materials. I only worked one case where classified information was an issue, and it was a rather minor one. What I found interesting about it is that the individual that owns the document can refuse to disclose it. Of course the charges would likely be dismissed, but it is interesting that the owner of the document can derail the whole proceeding.

6. One of the girls in the class is our next door neighbor and when I pointed that out to the class she apparently became a bit of a celebrity. She told us about it the next week. I felt like a bit of a celebrity because a bunch of kids wanted my autograph. First time that has ever happened. It was interesting because some had sheets of paper to collect all the signatures of the various presenters, others just tried to find any random bit of paper. I signed post-it notes, backs of receipts, old tests, you name it.

7. Most of the teachers didn't really pay much attention, I think they were trying to take care of some work. However, this one teacher was great. I had met him briefly when I went to School with Bella, he was the gym teacher. He ran the gym class pretty strictly. He did not run the career day very strictly though, he wanted to spend the whole time talking about the movie "A few good men" and doing the famous "You can't handle the truth" line. I don't think any of the kids had seen it though.

All in all, a pretty fun time. As I was leaving the school I walked by the cafeteria and good old Silvio was there and motioned for me to come in and talk to him. Unfortunately Bella wasn't there, but still always fun to see Silvio. He wasn't wearing a vest, but he did have his hair in a crazy mohawk with what looked like a ton of hair gel holding it all together!

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Don't Mess With KW!

KW is one of the smartest people I know.   Not academically smart - I'm sure school was not the best time of his life - but still super smart.  He was pretty much better than me at a lot of things I thought were really important: chess, ping-pong, mountain biking, rock climbing, building things (he laughed heartily the first time he saw me swing a hammer), fixing things with engines, backgammon, etc.  In modern education parlance we would say that he had high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.  And his spatial reasoning kicked ass. 

I think that because I thought of myself as smart, I tended to want to compete with KW a lot.  Well that and we were in our 20s and teens while working at camp and drank a lot.  Mix in testosterone and you have male egos clashing.  KW and I were good friends, he introduced me to climbing and was the first of many mentors n that field to me.  Though his bedside manner was often lacking (he liked to yell at partners to motivate them), he taught me a lot in my first few years at the Gunks. 

Our competitions usually ended up with KW winning.  I beat him at chess, once.  Out of perhaps a hundred games.  I never out-climbed him, then or now.  I beat him at Ping-Pong, once, though he was quite drunk.  Out of hundreds of card games of Hearts, I might have been victorious once.  If I tried to shoot the moon, I ended up missing by one card, if he tried, he usually got it.  Yet like the young buck I was, I kept at it.

The one place I had a fair shot was at the arcade.  On Wednesday nights or on the weekends, the staff used to drive down to Lake George and wander around aimlessly.  There's not much to do there except drink and play video games - so we usually spent a large deal of time in the arcade.  KW and I would engage in marathon Tetris games, games in which I had a slight edge sometimes.  I chalk this up to having skipped all my Sociology 101 lectures in college to go play Tetris.  Right next to the Tetris machine was a classic air hockey table.  It was here that the story I originally intended to write in this post took place.

KW and I were locked in a legendary battle.  We were sending the puck back and forth at blinding speeds.  Often spilling over the sides.  We garnered quite a few sideways glances from patrons who thought we were taking our game a little too seriously. 

At some point that summer we had discovered that we had a slight advantage placing our hands in the scooped out part of the paddles rather than holding the knob on top.  This left our knuckles exposed to repeated bashings from the puck which we sent whizzing back and forth.  There was very little strategy to these games, it was fake this way, fake that way, SHOOT, and repeat.

The battle had gone on for at least 20 minutes (which was quite long for an arcade air hockey battle) and we were all tied, next goal wins.  Back and forth, ouch and ouch, it went.  It was at this point that the impossible occurred.  I sent a shot whizzing at KW so hard that when he intercepted it, the puck flew up in the air, over his shoulder, hit the Tetris machine behind him, bounced higher and hit a blade on the overhead fan which, though the cheap plastic cracked, used its momentum to send the puck back down to the table in front of Keith, where he promptly shot it past my paddle and scored the winning goal.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

There was MasterCam training, surfing, visiting family, NYC, a cruise to Bermuda, and lots of gardening.  But in between it all my sister took my son and I to one of the coolest places I've ever been:


Pa may not look like much, as a matter of fact it looks like a run down house with aluminum siding sitting on the edge of a shopping plaza in downtown Portland, Maine.  That's because it is.  But the proverbial look can be deceiving and though the quality of the physical structure doesn't change as you enter and walk up the worn carpeting on the stairs, what's waiting for you inside has to be experienced to be believed.  Visiting the Portland arcade was one of the most awesome times I've had, ever.


As you walk up the stairs and reach the second floor you come to a desk/counter manned by an older gentleman who was probably a teenager in the 70's at the birth of the video game - but still has a sparkle in his eye and a feeling of pride as newcomers start to look around.  He explains that for $5 you get too choose a soda, a bag of chips and a record to play.  Yes, a record.  In a set of bookcases on the wall was a collection of a few hundred vinyl albums, mainly classic rock but with a good bit of punk, disco, new-wave and others thrown in.  I chose the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack and as he placed it on the turntable I entered the arcade.



I'm 43, which means I was 10 when the above date occurred.  Pong pre-dated me but otherwise I grew up with video games.  Saw them get fancier, switch from massive machines to  home consoles to PCs back to consoles; I witnessed them go from tapes to cartridges to CDs to online purchases; I was there when you were able to play with people not in the same room and then not in the same country; I saw controllers go from (pornographically named) joysticks to paddles to containing more buttons than you could shake a stick at, first with short wires then long wires then no wires; and I watched games migrate to tablets and phones and everything in between.  As I walked from room to room and sat in the many comfy chairs, I was transported back, waaaaay back.

The original Play Station
Can you identify the controller my son is using?
Yes, Bally had a home console.
And of course the original Nintendo controller.
The Commodore 64, need I say more?
Pong on a 13" black and white television.
Can you imagine purchasing a console you could play only one game on?
Nintendo Entertainment System
And my favorite.  In 5th grade, everyone had one of these.  My dad was a computer programmer so we had an Atari 800, one of their early PCs.  We had a few games played on a cassette tape (seriously) but I longed for my friends' houses and the hundreds of games....

I'm not sure if they had every game ever made for the 2600, but this pic is about half of what they had.


They even had ET, which was actually as bad as everyone had said it was.  This game was so bad that thousands of copies were buried and recently dug up.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/4/7158267/atari-2600-et-landfill-cartridges-ebay-auction
Click here to read the whole story.
I spent hours moving from couch to couch, playing games, journeying back to a more funner time in my life and introducing my kids (7 and 4) to games that weren't on a phone.  I can't think of a better way to spend $5.  But there was more, much more....

Got my name up there!

So I really wanted to end this post with an embedded playlist of videos from the visit to Portland Arcade, but blogger is not playing nice with my youtube channel, so here's the link if you want to see the intensity of my son playing Mario Kart, a classic Pong battle, my younger son totally baffled by what he's seeing, and several videos of my getting very intense with Space Invaders.