More -Versaries, Less Whining

On this very day (twenty-two years ago) I went to Boot Camp. I was the Navy version of Private Benjamin. I don't remember much about the trip to Orlando but I do remember I wore a darling, plaid, sleeveless sundress with a peter pan collar and smart red flats. There are two reasons I remember what I wore. One is that for the next nine weeks I wore prison clothes, aka "dungarees". (Fixating on the last pretty outfit you wore is a completely reasonable response if you are ever forced to wear an ensemble appropriately labeled by a word whose first syllable is "dung". Trust me on this.) The other reason I remember how nice I looked is funny (in retrospect). At the inprocessing facility of the recruit center (at 3 am or whatever ridiculous time it was that I got there), I was waiting for the jerk behind the desk to stop chatting with his buddy and stamp my papers so I could finally find my bunk and get some sleep when said jerk looked over at me and barked, "Don't lean against the bulkhead, dirtbag!" I looked over my shoulder to see whom he could possibly be talking to. There was no one in line behind me. I, in my cute sundress, was being called a dirtbag? I did not like this place, oh no, I did not.

Not so surprisingly to anyone who knows more about military things than I did at the time (which is probably every human over the age of 10), that moment now shines as one of the happier, more pleasant experiences of my nine week stay at NTC, Orlando. It was just that bad. For me. For one of my shipmates - a stellar lass who'd been given the choice between juvie (again) and Boot Camp when she was caught shooting at dogs and stealing cars with gang boys in Buffalo - it was paradise. She could NOT understand why I was whining. "They feed you three times a day. They keep the guys in another building so no one beats on you or sneaks up on you at night. So what if they yell at you? They got nothing on my old man." It stopped me in my tracks to realize that the worst place I'd ever been was the best place she'd ever been. (I still didn't like her but I did spend some time with her, forcing her to learn teaching her how to tie her chukka boots. We'd gotten gigged on two inspections because of her lack of lacing skills. I'd heard she was fixing to get a blanket party and couldn't stand the idea of her being disillusioned about how great Boot Camp was.)

I've been thinking about that today. Because I think about that kind of stuff on -versaries but also because it's a good thing to think about when I get whiny. Not that I don't have "good" reasons for my recent negative emotions. I have. Plenty. But figuring out a way to get through the whiny and into the coping portion of the plan as fast as possible is the goal. And today, when I was already trying to chivvy myself along this path, I was additionally inspired by three strong, amazingly positive women: RBR, Shirley Perly, and IMAble. Thanks peeps! I need all the reminders and examples I can get. Those posts spoke to me, my past spoke to me, my present (in the form of three strong wheel chair athletes smoking me on a run) spoke to me. Maybe it was the layering effect but my whining is over for the nonce. I think it's going to be a great rest of the week!