I think ill start most of my blogs off with a quote I think applies to the soon to be entry. This entry will be about my experience at Bootcamp.
Lets see I arrived in sunny Chicago at about 6pm on February 9th. I lied, there was no sun there was a blizzard and 12 inches of snow coming down. After the 6 hour bus ride from St. Louis to Great lakes I was surprisingly not remotely tired. I was, how do you put it... terrified beyond all belief... yeah that will work. The van holding the 8 of us pulls up and all we see is the grin of an angry petty officer. This is to become the norm for the next 8 weeks, no happy people anywhere just a bunch of guys trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what they have just gotten themselves into.
after 48 hours or so off no sleep, a pair of lost nikes, and a new wardrobe we finally meet our RDC's. She walks out into the middle of the room and lets us all know we are now her property and she wants to break every single one of us. But she had to let us sleep first, best 8 hours of sleep I had ever gotten let me tell you! Over the next few days we got to meet the rest of our RDC's.
Senior Chief
Petty Officer 1st Class
Petty Officer 2nd Class
They let us know the first 5 or so days we were lucky we were not allowed to be worked or forced to do push ups, just getting yelled at. We quickly start forming our own little niches, really just sticking to our corner of the room not wanting to be caught where we weren't supposed to be. All of us thinking, what in the hell did I get myself into, a feeling that doesn't go away quickly btw.
The First days were known as P-Days, and to be honest we were all glad they were done once they were over, shots just suck to get and you get a lot. Our first day out of P-days we have our swim quals, easiest thing ever, not even a lap in the pool you jump in, swim to the other side, and show you know how to do the deadmans float.
That is the only time any of us touched a pool, after that we were done with swimming.
After the first week we had all learned, petty officer 2nd class was no man to be triffled with, he and senior chiefs voice terrified all of us, them walking into the room sucked the air out of us and there was a freaky calm before the storm type ordeal, usually this lead up to us being "IT'd" or intesively trained. and this is where my bootcamp took a left turn from most other peoples, I got a staff job. I was the Division's Laundry man, and when I thought things might be going downhill I ran to my laundry room!
cheap I know, it did rub some people the wrong way, but what the hell I didnt want to be punished for other people, however there were always those times I couldnt get away. (Oh I forgot to mention we were moved from the indoc building two miles to a new building we would call home for 2 months, the USS Hopper it had its own laundry room)
Anyway, so as LPO me and my fellow LPO, a good friend of mine, were responsible for cleaning the entire Divisions laundry, every day of boot. TBH it was the best job we could get, we stayed out of the RDC's sight for the bulk of the day and we were always busy so the long boring days were nothing happened didnt exist for us. Honestly other than that Bootcamp was a breeze, the tests were not hard at all, the classes were all CBT (computer based training) were you would just sit in a room for 4 hours clicking next. The PFA's I could pass with one arm, and teh PT sessions were more stretching than anything. Shooting was fun and firefighting was awesome.
IF I can say anything about bootcamp, you do form bonds with some of the guys there, and you will never forget your RDC's.
Thats all for now
Black actors.
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