Tales from Basic Training

Something you may not know about me. I was in the Air Force. Maybe one day I'll tell all you kids what my ultra-interesting job was in the Air Force, but today I will share a story about Basic Training.

This particular story does not include any horrible yelling or abuse by my TI (training instructor), sorry to disappoint you. In fact, this story will be like many of my stories, just me bitching and moaning.

In Basic Training everything has to be perfect. Your ugly brown T-shirts need to be perfectly folded into 6 inch squares (and yes.. they get measured). Your drawers and locker has to have everything in it's perfect place (hangars 2 inches apart.... toothbrush holder to the left of your hairbrush... etc..). And, your bed needs to be made perfectly so you could bounce a coin off of it. I never actually saw anyone bounce a coin off of the bed, but whatever.

So, the whole perfect bed thing... We basically slipped very carefully under the covers each night and tried not to move for the entire night. Somehow this worked, and then making the bed was pretty easy. We would slide under the bed and pull the covers as tightly as we could, kind of hooking them to the springs so they would stay in place. Since we didn't move much during the night, this didn't take much time.

Except... the bitch that slept next to me was our "fire monitor", which was a fancy title for garbage man. She had to take the trash out every morning. So I got the lovely job of making her bed. She kicked the covers... she thrashed about every night. Why?? Because she didn't have to make her own damn bed.

I hope her Air Force career has ended and that the only jobs she is qualified for involve making beds all day. And that the people who sleep in those beds have horrible dreams where they thrash and sweat and kick... maybe she could work at some kind of bed-wetting research center or something. That would be good. That would be awesome.