Wednesday December 1, 2004 – First Gamble Pays Off

Wednesday December 1, 2004 – First Gamble Pays Off

I left home six months before I turned eighteen. I had enlisted in the Navy right out of high school. When I first got the idea of enlisting, I thought leaving home was going to be the best time of my life, but as soon as I got on the Greyhound bus for the journey from Tacoma to Seattle where I was to complete the paperwork and be sworn in, I felt completely lost. I had no idea of where I would be sleeping when the sun went down, no sense of what lay in store for me the following day and for the days to come. It was a terribly unsettling feeling. The uncertainty was maddening. The question I kept asking myself was what had I gotten myself into. Little did I know that within a week’s period of time, the Navy would set the direction for the rest of my life.

When you’re young and inexperienced, you have no idea of your precarious position in life. Only parents looking on their children can see it from having lived what you’re going through. My father was against my enlisting but my mother was champion, helping me with all the paperwork in my father’s absence. When he was made aware of my decision, he tried to talk me out of it but I kept pointing out to him that he left home when he was much younger than me and he couldn’t argue with that reasoning. If it was good for him, being on my own could only be good for me. Unwittingly, I had set in motion the direction my whole life would take from that point on and I didn’t have a clue. I was in the Navy and once embarked on that road, I could make no changes for another three and a half years—the length of my enlistment.

While many of my friends in high school were taking the time off during summer to prepare for their freshman year in college in September, I was looking forward to several years of traveling the world searching for myself. The crazy thing about making the choice to join the Navy is I had no idea of the number of decisions that I would have no say in until I was twenty one years old. The Navy would determine where I went, how long I would be there, what my duties would be... I’d bought a packaged tour but instead of paying in cash, I had tendered several years of my life. This was not apparent to the seventeen year old I was at that time. All I knew was that I was on an emotional roller coaster ride and I couldn’t get off.

For the first time I realized what I had left behind. At the same time, I still wanted to go. I knew that I had crossed a threshold. I had left the warm security of the proverbial nest and though I could return for a visit, I couldn’t go back. That time had past. I wanted to be on my own, going places of my own choosing, in this case, San Diego and the Recruit Training Center at the U.S. Naval Training Center. Little did I know that I would venture off the base only twice: the trip from San Diego Airport by bus to the center, and the trip to the airport from the center two months later.

After we arrived in Seattle on Wednesday June 12th and were processed and sworn in, the group I was with went to the YMCA to spend the night. We had a meal ticket for dinner and another for breakfast the following morning. After breakfast on Thursday June 13th we were taken by bus to SeaTac airport and boarded a Western Airways (no longer in business) flight departing at 10:00 for San Francisco. Getting on a plane for the first time in my life was a rush. The Boeing 707 coach cabin with its two rows of three seats on a side looked like first class accommodations. This was one of the experiences I had envisioned when I decided to join the Navy. The recruiter told me I would fly to San Diego. I was about to do just that. I had a window seat and as we accelerated down the runway and begun to climb skyward, I felt completely free like a leaf caught and being carried away by a strong wind. When the “No Smoking” light was extinguished I lit up a Marlboro from the flip-top box in my shirt pocket and took pleasure in being for the moment free and on my own.

We arrive in San Francisco a couple of hours later and after a long layover changed planes for the flight to San Diego, this time we were aboard a twin propeller commuter plane that stopped somewhere en route before touching down in San Diego. We arrived late on June 13th. The day of travel and the long bus ride to the Naval base contributed to a general sense of depression and longing for a place to curl up and go to sleep. But, that was not to be. We spent a good couple of hours standing in line waiting to be processed and given our bedding for the night. From the time we left the airport and boarded the bus to the base, we all got the sense that we were no longer free. We were in prison and everyone was treating us like inmates.

I learned that evening that I was no longer a person. I was a “shitbird” and anytime someone in uniform asked what I was, I was to respond, “I’m a shitbird, sir!” I came to like the term over time. It had a certain appealing quality to it. Over the next several days, we were treated as a herd, eating together in an enormous mess hall, sleeping in a barracks that had become home to our company and we marched everywhere in a massed formation. Early on Friday, we woke to morning calisthenics followed by a shower and breakfast and immediately afterward, we were provided with all the clothes we would need for the time we would be in boot camp, a couple of pairs of denim jeans with matching denim shirts, white boxer shorts and tee-shirts, and several white sailor hats—which I learned had to be cleaned with a scrubbing brush to remove the sweat stains on the inside rim, a item always checked during uniform inspection that were scheduled as well as impromptu when the drill instructor decided to check.

After a week of getting settled in, early one morning we were marched to a large building where we were greeted by an officer who spoke in a professorial tone detailing that we would be sitting in a large room for the next couple of hours taking a test. He explained that it was important for each of us to apply ourselves to the task and answer each multiple-choice question by clearly marking our answer sheet with the number-2 pencil which were being provided for this task. He warned that there was to be no talking or exchanging answers throughout the test and as soon as we were finished to submit the test to the monitor at the front of the room and to leave the room by the exit at the opposite end from where we entered.

Some time later we were given our test results and I did much better than I had expected. Little did I know that the results were being run through a computer, which was matching each of us up with a job opening within the service. At that time, the Navy was in dire need of technicians to maintain the increasing amount of new electronics including computers that were installed into every ship in the fleet. The computer picked me and my first stop after boot camp was Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. If the Navy had asked me where I wanted to go, this was the place I would have said. I was going to school to learn how to maintain electronic gear. I had hit my first jackpot in the big casino of life. My recruiter had told me I would have to sign up for six years to get this and here I was having it handed to me.