Retrospection
Sometimes I think about the past and that's that. Other times I think "wait, did that really happen?". Our brains are kind of funny like that, or mine is. This is like my own personal archaeology, to document my own memories lest I forget them, but also prove that happened, places exists, events occurred, folks lived, and so on. I also want to focus a bit on geospatial aspects, because for some reason aside from my employment, I find it rather interesting.
Maybe the trickle tickle in the back of my brain was started by this rambling series of thoughts relating to the bifurcating potential of reality due to a road rash injury I got by being a dumbass and riding a skateboard down in a hill in Tennessee. It's trucks were very loose and the hill was rather large. It was definitely not the first time I did something stupid like this. I once went out in a hurricane with a tarp while the winds were whipping and used said tarp like a sail. Oh, it worked. I definitely fell of then as well, but I might have been wearing a helmet. In Tennessee, I got that road rash because I was wearing shorts. Who knows what would be different, how things would have gone had I worn jeans that day.
Anyway.
What if I had gone to boot camp the day I was supposed to?
A LCPL's Mundane Memories of the U.S. Marine Corps
An Uninteresting Memoir in a Sea of 1000 others
I joined the Marine Corps officially in July or August of 2007. I leave some room there because I don't know how exactly it would be said "officially" because I joined the delayed entry program in June of 2006, the summer before my Senior year in high school. The delayed entry program was alright. Mostly going to the recruiting office a lot to do weekend events like doing pullups out back, running in the parking lot around what was the old Coliseum Mall, which had been converted to Shipyard offices.
The whole point of the delayed entry program, really, I think, is to get young pre-recruits a bit more ready for boot camp. We practiced marching, because you're gonna do a lot of that at Parris Island. I don't think it was me, but some other kid, who got mocked by one of our recruiters for marching like an ape, I think he said Donkey Kong, because he was swinging his arms with his legs instead of the opposite of ones legs. Heh heh, that was funny.
We had an event, I think it might have been called Poolee Day, at Little Creek, the adjunct base USMC attached Norfolk Naval Base.
(It used to be called Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, commonly known as just Little Creek but it now called Joint Expeditionary Base–Little Creek (JEB–LC) because raisins)
This event was a big get together, and I don't really remember much about it anymore, but a lot of Poolees were there, I think from the surrounding area. For some reason we had a 'competition' to do pulps. This was basically one of maybe 2 times I ever actually got the full 20 pull ups. Oh, and I get heat exhaustion, first award. Wouldn't be the last. I would leave boot camp is 'worse' shape than I went in. Granted, I worked out a lot in the garage at home before I went in. I was a bit gung-ho. That wouldn't last.