The Morning My Life Changed Forever  − 31 October, 1991

Most people have a subject line like that when a parent died, or when they lost a limb. Well, both of my parents are still living and last I checked, all my limbs are intact. My life changed forever the day Staff Sergeant Whittaker, U.S. Army Recruiter, picked me up at my house in the Pocono Mountains and delivered me to the Wilkes-Barre Mepps Station. It was early morning on a day that turned out to be cloudy. My grandma Ludwig was staying at our house. She was sad to see me go, and so were my parents, but I found out later that she was upset when I left the house and my parents sighed and said, "Thank God!"
Don't get me wrong, my parents didn't want me to leave, but they were glad I did. If you were ever a teenager or have raised one, you know what I mean.

In the car on the way there, Mrs. Whittakker was telling me all that was good about the Army and about her stint in Alaska and how she doesn't mind being uprooted every few years with her husband to different duty stations and sees it as a way of seeing the world. Nice right?

I got to the Mepps station and had yet another physical and yet another swearing in ceremony (it was my second of four total). By 4 o'clock that afternoon, I was in Ft. Knox Kentucky getting yelled at. We were ushered to the barber and everyone got the neccessary bald head look, We were just a bunch of douchebags in civilian clothes at this point and we looked like a cult marching around. We'd pass guys that had been there two weeks and thought to ourselves, "Someday we'll look that cool." Little did we know that those cool, squared-away soldiers had been at Ft. Knox for 3 days. It's amazing how quickly the Army transforms snot-nosed, "Young dumb and full of cum" kids, into men. I was one of them. Basic Training didn't even start yet. We found out later that that would come in 2 weeks. We were in a holding pattern for two weeks getting registered and being sworn in 2 more times and getting about 30 immunity shots.

By the next morning at 4:30 a.m. I began cursing Staff Sergeant Whittaker like the Drill Sergeants were cursing at me. I think she forgot to mention the whole, "You belong on the bottom of my dirty-ass boots maggot!" thing.