Tri-Banter wrote:
My last triathlon "come-back" was 2003-2007 ---
Who in the hell takes 4 years as a 'come-back'? How slow are you?
It was a really long race.
jmh wrote:
Scott you seem like a decent enough dude and will fit in just fine here.
The fact that you were both a Jarhead and Army Doggie confuses me, but Rangers are all right by me.
I was a Marine as a youngster. I was very impressed with the Marine officers I worked with. Near the end of school I decided, what the hell, I want to see what I'm made of so I went to the local strip mall with all the recruiting offices. I walked into the USMC recruiting office to sign up to be an officer in the United States Marine Corps.
Me: Gunny, I'm about to graduate from college and I want to go to Officer Candidate School.
Gunnery Sergeant recruiter: Sorry kid, OCS has been full for 10 months. You want to get on the waiting list?
When I was back out on the sidewalk, all deflated re. the complete failure of my life's plan, i was all "well, wtf do I do now?"
So I went next door to the Navy recruiter. They had a big poster of a Navy Seal. I didn't know what they were, this was '88 Hollywood hadn't found them yet, but it was a really cool poster. So I pointed to the poster and
Me: So tell me about these Navy Seals.
Sailor NCO: Do you swim?
At this point I'd been on the school's triathlon team for 3yrs, so I was doing a helova lot of swimming. I just wasn't much good at it. It was the cycling and running that carried me. I thought that the sailor was asking me if I swam competitively. I don't know why the hell I leaped to that conclusion. In retrospect it doesn't make any sense. But I was hopped up on hormones wanting to prove how tough I was, and I wasn't any brighter than any other 26yr old. What I knew for sure is that the folk's on the school's swim team were much faster than I. So that made for a clear answer to this logical question "do you swim competively?" re. this mystery elite naval force.
Me: No.
Sailor NCO. Well, sorry, then you can't be a Navy Seal.
I was now 0 for 2 in charting my life's road.
So I went next door to the Army recruiter. I'd read lots of books over the past decade re. the exploits of the Marines, but all I knew about the Army was that "we" held them in low esteem. The Army recruiting office had this big poster of a US Army Ranger. I didn't know who they were, but it was a really cool poster. And I remembered that there'd been a total stud dude, a couple years older than me, in HS and all he talked about was becoming a Army Ranger. Damned if he hadn't owned that same poster at his house.
Me: So tell me about these Army Rangers.
And that's how it happened.
In retrospect, I kinda regret not ending up a Marine officer. With only one exception, every Marine officer I ever met was awesome. Army officers are a lot more average. Some are awesome, many are average, some are fat lazy oxygen thieves. I was really proud to be a Marine. I was never proud to be in the Army.
A problem with going off to be a Marine officer is that it's very difficult to get the branch (job area) that you want. I could go to OCS, all hot to be a Marine Corps Infantry Officer, do fine in OCS, yet end up an Administration Officer charged with preparing clerk typists for combat. Totally could have happened. Me, being young and full of myself you know, not like "now" (irony alert), I was all "give me Infantry or give me death". I was so full of ignorant moxie back then that I was practically a lunatic.
The SEAL thing could have been cool too. But one of the things that I learned about myself is that I wasn't as terrific as I thought I was. Shocking sure, but at the time this was a fascinating lesson because it was my first exposure to guys, under very difficult conditions, that were genuinely tough. Not in a loud brash way, but in a quiet and unassuming way. There's guys that are really hard, and really smart. They can absorb huge privations of hot/cold/wet/hungry/exhausted, and it just doesn't seem to phase them much. They're always watching and aware, and they're always thinking ahead. I never knew guys like that existed and I was not their equal. I could play the role of "inexhaustible reserves of toughness" for a while, but the amount of energy needed to maintain that will suck me dry. At some point, I'll screw up. I won't see something, I won't see a problem coming, because I'm worn out and feeling sorry for myself. And that's what separated me from the studs. So there's no guarantee that I would have had what it took to make it thru BUDS and the various follow-on SEAL training. I might have screwed it up. And it would have been a bummer to fail.
Books @ Amazon "If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart