Something good...

A good friend of mine, who is enjoying his life in the ROK right now, asked me to think of something good about recruiting. Initially I had told him that the only good thing about recruiting was this: Special Duty Assignment Pay. Well, I thought about it a little bit more and came to this conclusion: there is one more thing that is good about recruiting. I now have a much deeper appreciation for the real Army. I used to complain about everything, particularly all of the silly little things; i.e., the battalion runs, wearing a kevlar, getting called up to do a whiz quiz, the field, etc. I always held the notion that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". Now I know how mundane those things truly were. There was always a light at the end of the tunnel: vis-à-vis now, where that light is nowhere in sight. Well, it's nearly three years from now, but still, that's a long way off.

We have a gentleman in our office who needs some help. He's a nice enough guy, but he's well on his way to getting stuck out here. He's WAY overweight, and they will use that against him when the time comes for him to return to the Army ("Sarge, you're flagged. The Army doesn't want you back, but USAREC loves you. You can make it out here. Hell, we'll overlook your flag if you'll convert."). We try to help him, you know, and give him pointers and such, but his personality is such that it makes it difficult. He's so friggen' standoffish! Not only that, but when the time comes to leave the orofice, the M-Fer is never ready. Last night, Sergeant Pokey-Slow took an extra 20 minutes to get ready to leave. My ass was stuck in the office until 9:20 because that dude took so damn long!! Twenty minutes that I could have spent with my family!!!