In our last episode, I entered the Navy’s
Delayed Entry Program.
And went back to school...
January
29-August 29
Home
Wallingford,
Connecticut
The
following seven months were a blur.
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| My friend Spags got accepted to Sacred Heart University on the strength of his "Visible Man vs. Visible Jesus" presentation. |
By the
way, I didn’t and it was.
I
ignored my stepfather’s dire warnings of, “You shouldn’t have signed up so
early. A lot can happen in seven
months. Including....how ‘bout you
clean your damn room?”
Even
though the first day of boot camp hung over my head like the sword of Damocles
(see? I sometimes paid attention
in class), the end of August may as well have been the end of summer. I saw nothing in my future which would
convince me that I had made the wrong decision. College could wait; after four years, I would enroll at the
University of Connecticut with full veteran’s benefits. I could then realize my dream of
sleeping in until noon.
Rather
than bore you with a detailed list of what I did before I left on my four year
camping trip, I’ll just give you a brief synopsis.
That
way, we can finally get on with Navy stories. Which is why you bought-or stole-this book in the first
place. Hell, I would’ve stolen
it. But, if you’ve already bought
it, sucks to be you.
My
bad.
NOTE: For those of you reading on Blogger, good for you, you’ve made a wise business decision. Not only do you avoid having to waste
who knows how much on this trash, you get to see lots of pictures. Well done.
After
I enlisted in the Delayed Entry program, I.....
missed gym but got to school in time for pizza burgers (sweet!),
met a girl in the library (she was following me in the reference section), listened
to Bohemian Rhapsody for
the first
time in her unheated attic (by the way, yes I tried. No we didn’t.
Thanks for asking.), joined the National Honor Society (sure had those guys fooled), saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail with
some friends from Stratford (truly a sausage fest), intrigued when my stalker
girlfriend told me her father ran a cockfighting ring, relieved when I learned
it only involved chickens, got a job at Dino’s
Seafood Restaurant as the token Irishman (I was surrounded by Baldarellis,
Aguzzis, and LaRussos), took my girlfriend to her Junior
Prom, did not get
lucky (yet again), broke up with said girlfriend (no, the two events are
unrelated), ran into potential legal difficulties involving Dino’s niece’s
Rambler (I can’t tell every story here), received a ‘D’ on a paper about The Crucible (guess I should have cared), told my English
teacher I was “going into the Navy, anyway, what did I need the Puritans for,
anyway?”, ran out of gas coming home from work one night (stupid canary yellow Ford
LTD Country Squire station wagon with faux wood paneling) , went to the beach
with some girls from my class (much better than the aforementioned sausage
fest), got sunburned, called in sick to work saying I was attacked by a swarm
of bees (because “sunburn” sounded fake), had to go to work for the next
two
weeks with a bandage on one side of my face (didn’t really think that one
through), got bit on the head playing soccer, refused to attend my Senior Prom
because of the “principle of the thing” (and the girl I was going to ask was
already asked by a guy named Jeff.
I hated Jeff. Who, incidentally, was the guy who bit me on the head in soccer), graduated from high school, took a call from my
recruiter who told me that, instead of leaving August 31st, I was
now leaving for boot camp on the 30th, and, two months before I
left, met a girl who would break my heart two years later.
 |
| No wonder I didn't get lucky. Freddy Mercury was gay. Shoulda figured. Their name was Queen. |
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| Yeah, no kidding. You think I made it up? Oh...yeah...right...that's legit. Anyway, the place still exists. Unlike Dino. |
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| I may have gotten carried away. But, it was the beach! |
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| Riverside Amusement Park. Agawam, MA You may know it now as Six Flags New England. Yeah, I'm that old. Hope she's fat. |
Should’ve cleaned my room, too.
NEXT: I leave for Boot Camp.....
