Civilians At Boot Camp

I am not in the military and I do not plan on joining any time soon. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got real respect for the brave boys in the service, but that is just not my calling right now. Nor did I particularly feel called to join the army grunts at morning Physical Training (PT). In fact, the notion of joining did not even cross my mind until I was asked.

My suitemate is a workout junky. To look at him, you might think differently, but when the blood gets flowing that guy is a solid collection of ATP. He can run, jump, grapple with football linemen – he ain’t too big, neither – and still have enough get-up-&-go to hit the gym. He climbs sheer walls – both boulders and buildings – for fun, without rappelling lines. He’s also social in his exercise, so not a few days into semester he was bugging us to join him at his activities.

One of these was PT with the boys of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). The poor saps join the army, then get up at five every morning, rain or shine, to fashion their bodies into suave death-dealing machines. To everyone’s surprise, including the ROTC officers’, my suitemate joined them. He would get up at O’dark-thirty and proceed to “get shredded,” often coming home after classes with knuckles and palms stripped of skin from doing pull-ups and the like. And he wanted us to join him. I flat-out refused at first, preferring my hit-or-miss swimming schedule to “getting shredded” on a daily basis. Suitemate was incorrigible, telling me that college was about getting out and doing something memorable. The sick thing is that I agreed with him, just not on the ROTC issue. But I decided that I’d give him one workout in the hope of appeasing his incessant pleas.

The day I elected to attend, it was Suitemate and I along with two cowboy friends and another late show. We arrived at PT in high spirits and after role call we fell out into groups of four or five each for station drills. Pull-ups, pushups, bicycles, crunches, lunges, and tire-jumping ensued. And I had neglected to bring water. So for forty-five minutes I was on the verge of tossing my cookies.

After all stations had been hit the whole company bolted out of the building and jogged across campus and back. Suitemate and Late Show were up there with them, shouting and whooping for the joy of inflicting self-improving pain, while the cowboys and I sauntered briskly behind. We took our time, and wandered down to the designated turn-about, dodging touch military encouragement, and on the way back we realized what the army boys had been yelling about “running the bear.” As we approached the football stadium, we saw lines of gray-shirted GIs hustling up and down the bleachers. At that the cowboys suddenly found their second wind – at least one did, the other sort of stumbled purposefully in pursuit – and left me to follow, dehydrated and sore.

Once in the bleachers, I did all right at walking pace, but by the time I was about four-fifths of the way through one of the drill sergeants appeared suddenly behind me. I had seen him churning along behind some of the other stragglers, urging them on to greater feats, ordering the vomit case aside. At last leaving the others, he fell in behind me and started lecturing me about training and telling myself to go on.

“Your washing machine doesn’t tell you when it washes, right, so your body doesn’t tell you when it’s gonna work, what keeps you moving, ATP right, you’ve got plenty of that left so where’s the problem: in your mind; your mind is still your own, you make it tell your body when to work…”

curiously, I actually was able to go on, faster, stronger, and even made a clumsy jump to touch a rafter when leaving the stadium. And as it happened, by the time I got back (last) the final exercises were done and we were off for breakfast at the cafeteria.

Since then I’ve been to PT twice more. I’ve no real desire to catch this “sickness” that everyone assures me will soon take hold – that I’ll push myself to painful limits in the name of improvement – but I’ll be trying to make PT more often. I’ve also found it is a lot easier when accompanied by a water bottle.