Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Your Corps Vs. My Core

My dearest readers, oh, beloved readers of mine... OOH, my dear bretheran.  Let me approach you for a moment in solemn sincerity, not as a writer, nor a blogger.  Nay, I am appealing to you today not as a brother or equal, or even a
fellow human being... but as something more ominous and narcisistic.  Consider me the echo of a voice from beyond the grave, as it were, a wailing and gnashing of teeth; today I am your Ghost of Christmas Future, and you are my Scrooge... for today, oh my little children, I speak to you not as a man, but as a U.S. Marine.

YES!  I know how it sounds.  I can imagine your horrified gasps of horror, confusion, shock, horror, and even disgust.  But this revelation must come my beloved worshipers.  Some of you are youngsters or, even fairly oldsters, lacking direction and ambition in life.  Maybe your father is pressuring you to "do something with your life" whatever that means, and he wants you to follow in his footsteps by selling yourself into indentured servitude to the U.S. Department of Defense for the next 20-40 years of your life.
Maybe your friends all moved on in life, or joined the military.  They have left home to serve, fight, and die for this great nation... in boot camp.  You are bored and lonely hanging out in your parent's basement.  You realize you were a follower of the crowd with no real self-awareness or individual identity... and you want for that to continue.  You long for that same pride of belonging that you can only earn by letting other people make your decisions and determine your personality for you.  Or maybe your friends all got good jobs in the Army and Air force, and you want to show them up one and be seen as the tough guy, so you will join the Marine Corps.  You will allow your body to be abused and destroyed and aged before it's time.  You will apply for the 6th crappiest job on earth, get screwed, and end up with one of two jobs so crappy they didn't make the list.  Your idea of "professional behavior will be yelling random sounds and such things as "kill babies" at you boss when he talks to you; running in your underwear with other men in matching underwear, in the dead of night while loudly chanting strange obscenities.

Mayhaps, oh my dear little brothers and sisters, you have a girlfriend.  Whether you have dated for 4 months or 4 years, her new name will be Suzie Rottencrotch, and you will tremble in excitement as you tell her you will be enlisting.  She will be so excited for you.  She loves a man in uniform, she says.  If only you knew just how much.  However she will express certain concerns.  But you will tell each other you are in love and it will be ok.  Then you will go to boot camp and write her every day.  You will recieve two letters from her, then not again for several weeks.  Then you will get a letter from her.  Your name will be spelled wrong, and she will melodramatically confess to you that she was soooo worried about you that she had to talk to your recruiter about what was going on, and he was there to comfort her.  Long story short, for the past few weeks, instead of writing you, she has been banging your recruiter.  And the other marines that work in the recruiting office.  At the same time.  And the Army staff sergeant next door when they were out.  Now she is so overcome with guilt that she must say goodbye.
"Thank you for your continued interest.
Yours faithfully, Suzie R."
It's ok.  It could be worse.  Sometimes Suzie never even tells you she did anything like that while you were gone.

Fear not, young padewog.  Eventually you will marry.  She will be the most beautiful bride imagineable, hourglass figure, lips like flowerpetals... 2 years later, this amazing woman will have 3 kids, with another on the way (a feat in itself considering that none of the children are twins... they won't even be all the same color!  What an amazing woman you will have married), and she will weigh in at a whopping 480 lbs, unable to leave the bedroom without the assistance of a crane.  This and her supernatural abilities to suck your bank accounts dry no matter what will help her live up perfectly to her new title of "military dependant."

Just imagine all the things you will do that you never thought you would.  Like become an alcoholic.  Get chased by ladyboys in a third world country, or learn that prostitutes in the philippines cost less than $50 (usd) and decide to get three consecutively or at once.  Maybe you will kill a family's livestock or pet goat in Afghanistan, or learn where the U.S. Governments true priorities lie, or loose your sight or legs.  There are SOOO many possibilities in the Marine Corps.  It will take all your time to explore them.  Like all night "field days," exploring all the places trace amounts of dust can hide in your room.  Maybe you can work your way up to Staff Non Commissioned Officer, at which point you will have the esteemed role of being on call at all times to do the bidding of simple-minded officers; working late, answering endless requests and filling out endless paperwork, and taking responsibiloty for every mistake or hiccup that anyone below you has made ever in history.   Essentially by the time you have risen to the proud rank of Staff Sergeant, you have attained the covetted billet of "office para-bitch"  or "assistant to the main office-bitch in charge of paperclips."

People will ask you if you will re-enlist, and you will say you don't know yet.  You will be thinking about how much you hate your life.  They will chuckle and wide-eyed, they will say, "If you're going to do four years, you might as well re-enlist, just to see if you really like it or not.   And if you do 8 years, you might as well do twenty, and why stop there.  Just another twenty years and you have full retirement benefits."   You will nod and squint thoughtfully, thinking about what to eat for lunch and how to avoid your sergeant for the rest of the morning.  The words that person spoke will seem logical to you, even though the real question is:  why stay in longer than you must?!

To summarize, dear esteemed reader... there comes a time in a man's life when he must look to some group or organization to give him a solid hand of guidance.  If that time comes for you, and it must be four letters, before you consider USMC, you should consider YMCA.

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