A Really Scary Story...

In case anyone was wondering how my sister is doing at BOT- she is doing great, really...um...great. Here is a recent e-mail, just to let you know how, um, great she is doing...

So...I I'm not supposed to talk about the really terrible things they
do
to us here, so this is a G Rated version of how my days typically go...


It's kinda like the movie, Groundhog Day. Every Day I wake up to the
soft, static sound of a Christian Rock station playing on the alarm
clock. It's always 4:30 am, I am always in the same position in my bed
and it is pitch dark outside. I am still sore and exhausted from the
previous 19 hour day and I go about my routine of remaking my bed,
getting my gear on and brushing my teeth in the dark (because we are
not
allowed to have the lights on before we are supposed to be in the hall
outside our rooms in the morning to march to PT...make sense?)

Then I go through the day performing various tasks with funny
names...like today, for example, we had to get up at 4:15am instead of
4:30am because we were doing a "Flight Line Run." Gee...that sounds
interesting, I thought as I bumped and thumped in the dark this
morning...it can't be that bad.....

Then I realized that I am a total retard for thinking that. I thought
that we would form up as a flight and run around the track a few
times....I was wrong.

Not only do we have BOT (Basic Officer Training - that's me) students
here at OTS (Officer Training School), we also have COT (Commissioned
Officer Training - that's Ness), and ROTC. We have several classes of
each and some super smart individual...probably a disgruntled Logistics
Readiness Officer (lol), thought that it would be fun to see all 1000
of
us run at the same time.....

So...where can 1000 people run together all at the same time? The
runway
of course! Genius... our students are used to running about 2 miles
every morning...so let's make it 3 miles today just so we can watch
them
all trip over one another as they stumble down the 3-mile long
runway...so that's why they call it a "Flight Line Run."

Various other daily tasks include marching EVERYWHERE on the base (we
haven't earned the right to walk anywhere by ourselves yet) to the
same,
"HUP TOOP THREEP FOURP." Only the ROTC people are cool enough to have
cadences. We just march ourselves around being led by a guy holding
what
appears to be a giant curtain rod (Ness you know what I mean) called a
"guide-on" which is kind of paradoxical because the guy that's usually
holding it is the one that marches off in some random direction away
from the rest of the flight.

Then we get to eat... not really eat as much as shovel as much food as
we can into our face and drink the 24 oz of water that we are required,
in the 3 short minutes we are given to sit down, eat, drink and get up.
Next we are given about 10 minutes to get into full BDU gear...(notice
no mention of a shower). Then it's off to our classes for the day where
we sit in a giant air-conditioned auditorium with comfortable seats and
are expected to stay wide awake for a three hour lecture given by a
crusty old guy that reminds me of Ben Stein. There is a reason that
they
have dubbed the auditorium, "the coma dome."

If you feel tired you are supposed to get up and stand in the back of
the class. If you do this you also get demerits from the upper class,
who are kind of like Drill Sergeants to us.

Repeat this entire process three times a day, throw in reading 100
pages of leadership and management and answering corresponding questions for
the CWT (our 1st test), memorizing various quotes and knowledges for
corresponding training days, giving the proper greeting and salute to
commissioned staff and upper class, remember your reporting procedures,
classroom and auditorium procedures, ironing two sets of uniforms,
preparing news briefings, learning how to play the most complex game,
Flickerball, ever created, doing laundry and rolling it to spec for
room
inspections, remembering to stand up straight, tuck in your shirt and
shoelaces, shine your boots, make sure you annotate your Ranger Rope on
your canteen, make sure you drink the nasty lukewarm sink water out of
your canteen (oh yeah...we are only allowed to drink water right now as
we haven't earned the privilege of drinking anything else...we also
aren't allowed desert), putting up with feuding roommates and doing a
million push ups before "lights out" at 11:00pm and you pretty much
have
my day.

So now when you think you are having a bad day... look down at your
civilian clothes and the Coke in your hand and think about the girl in
BDUs with 20 lbs of gear on, who smells like fear, sweat and shoe
polish, trying to keep her chin up in the hell hole known as Maxwell
AFB, Montgomery AL.

OT McDaniel...out.