In the Army…almost!
Something you might not know about me…I was in the Army…for about two days.
The Story…
Believe it or not…I was recruited and sworn into the Army at age 16 to become a Russian linguist. At the time, this was a DREAM job for me in so many ways, they weren’t just paying for school on the GI…I had a full ride for 6 years of school and OCS when I signed on for 8 years (all this was in writing).
Of course, this is ME…so nothing really goes as planned. Just two days after swearing in, a quack of a contract surgeon that wasn’t even a part of the MEPS staff examined my knee (required for anyone joining that had an arthroscopic surgery in the previous year), and determined that my kneecap was too loose for service in the military…thus permanently disqualifying me from service.
If you’d known me at the time, you’d know how bad a call this was on the doctors part.
This was a really pivotal point for me…because up until this point I had a plan, and it included a paid-for masters degree and an extra $60k sign-on for my first 8 years and made OCS mandatory. This wasn’t just school, it was a guaranteed career with some serious career opportunities available when I was done. When I found out I wasn’t going to be able to serve…it had an incredibly negative effect on me. I couldn’t do what i thought I was supposed to be doing. Never you mind that I was already physically capable of all the physical training requirements, and nevermind that I’d aced all their tests. I was mad because I wasn’t ever going to get to serve in the manner I thought I was supposed to.
…and it’s always been something I felt everyone should do, myself included.
Being the all or nothing sort of guy I am…I wouldn’t even speak to my recruiter again. He fought and fought hard for me, apparently he went pretty for up to get the ruling changed…so much that it actually took him six months to get my status changed contingent on my willingness to re-enlist, but by then I’d already slipped down into the craziness that was my senior year and was bent on getting a full ride to some obscure college as far from everything local as possible.
It was when I found that my aptitude for learning saved me, and I learned that I could enjoy life without it needing to be rigid.
Eventually, I learned that it was their loss, not mine.
Anyhow…thus ends the day’s journal. 😉
-T
