Without his consent.
First let me preface this by saying I have the upmost respect for anyone who has the bravery, physical and mental toughness to join any branch of the service. Saying I have about 10% of what they have in all those areas is probably me way over estimating myself, which I’ve been known to do on occasion. Anyone who has the courage to put on those uniforms and do what they do have more grittiness in their pinky than I’ve got in my entire body…
That being said, somehow getting my friend to have to endure 13 weeks of some of the hardest, most intense training on the planet is absolutely hysterical to me. Call me immature and childish, but the thought of him waking up at 4am every day and being absolutely punished physically and mentally for something he didn’t even sign up for, made me laugh so hard I almost cried.
Lets start from the beginning.
I was sitting on the couch with the Roommate finishing up my second bottle of pinot noir from the Santa Barbara County region of California when I had an idea for a little game. I told him that we should each try and enlist each other in boot camp and that whoever gets the furthest, the other person should have to join. He thought it was funny, but he wasn’t on board with dealing with the consequences of me winning. No branch of the service would take me. I’m out of shape, lazy, and to be honest kind of a moron. Whereas he is a college graduate in fairly good shape. They would have taken him quickly.
I still really wanted to do this. So I picked my target. I’m going to give him a fake name because he has a great career, an incredible girlfriend, and a family that I love, so let’s go with something random, like Shawn. Also, I asked his permission if I could even post this blog, check it out:
You might be wondering why I picked him out of all of my friends. If someone asked you to describe a Marine you would probably land on words like courage, discipline and bravery, among other gloriousness. One would probably describe Shawn as flamboyant, an excellent dancer, naughty, and he has sort of a sassy innocence about him. He’s incredibly lovable and while he’s an extremely hard worker, I don’t think he would last more than 60 seconds in that kind of high stress environment. He’d get Gomer Pyle’d pretty quickly.
So Shawn was sitting on my other couch when The Roommate and I were having our discussion about boot camp. He was just so involved in some stupid video game on his cell phone he didn’t hear anything. So I went to the Marines website and started filling out information. It was easy. Sure there were some things about him I didn’t know, like his address. But I’m smart.
“Hey Shawn, what’s your address? My sister is sending out thank you cards for her wedding.”
Shawn gave up his address right away. I hope he doesn’t give up information this quick when he’s in the Marines. They frown upon that kind of shit.
Next up was his birthday.
“It’s the same as your sisters, asshole.”
He didn’t even ask why I was asking him his birthday. I had to pry a little more because I don’t know any birthdays by memory, that’s what Facebook is for. Also, I wanted to have all of his information right, I don’t want him starting his career off in the Marines by him having to fill out any corrective paperwork, I wanted him to be able to get right down to business.
I had to fill out a little more information that I was able to guess within reason, I figured it wasn’t that important.
So fast forward to the next day, I’m at the driving range with Shawn and the Roommate when his phone goes off.
It was met with him yelling, “Dude what the fuck? I’m not joining the Marines.”
And that’s when he started with all of these excuses about why he can’t join the Marines. I’m too old, I don’t want too, I’m in terrible shape, I really don’t want too, but all I heard was “blah, blah, blah”. They were all lame excuses. -*/9
I mean honestly, have a set of balls for once in your life, just once. When someone signs you up to join the Marines you have an obligation to yourself and your country to step up to the plate and serve. Or at least go to boot camp. Or you know what, maybe just do a few years, see if you like it.
I spent the rest of my day saying stuff like, “You’d better enjoy that cigarette, there’s no smoking in boot camp.” And, “Nope, I’m not leaving the bathroom, you’ve gotta get used to shitting around other people.”
In all seriousness though, if you enjoyed this blog, or even if you didn’t, you should donate some money to the Wounded Warriors Foundation, they do a lot of great things for a lot of well deserving people.
The ScotchSquatch 