Cement Rooms, Snot Floors: Dinner Convo

My sister sent me a letter from Basic Training with detailed drawings of her chemical warfare/gasmask training:

(All drawings 2010 copyright KML, Soldier, USA Army, America the Beautiful)

Now, nearly my entire family has gone through basic training except for me (and my mother, but I’m quite sure they wouldn’t let her in because she would scare the drill sergeants and say such passive aggressive things to the cooks they would be forced to secretly poison the entire battalion in a mass suicide attempt) and I have heard about this day in basic from my brothers and mostly - my dad, who suffered through it probably in ‘68 when they made gas masks out of bandanas and band-aides. It was and still is one of his more animated story presentations – he used to tell us stuff like that over dinner - “You think mom’s burnt Bisquick and tuna casserole smells bad – let me tell you about when I had to hold my breath for forty minutes while a bunch of pansies puked and cried all over themselves…”

According to K, getting tear-gassed is of course, extremely uncomfortable, and produces a LOT of snot.  So there’s just crowds of recruits doubled-over, choking, with eyes watering like supersoakers and strings of snot falling from their nose to the floor. And when they come out – the sadistic trainers (drill sergeants, captains, whoever) are all there to take pictures of people gasping for fresh air through their snot-covered faces. I think the photos are the modern twist to the old tradition. The image that stays with me (and one that I gathered from her letter, not a photo) is of my little sister standing in a pool of other people’s snot and barf waiting for her turn to suffah – suffah for our freedom! For Jersey Shore and blue jeans and automobiles and rock shows and corn mazes and liposuction and Linsay Lohan and booster seats and low airfare and genetically modified fruit and iPhone aps. 

Shine sweet freedom. Shine your light on me. (But keep it away from the floor of that cement room chamber thing – I mean who cleans that up?!)