I was asked just a few days ago if any of this has sunk in yet. After the long road of all the waiting, the push-backs, the lineage of disappointments, was it finally settling in, this thought that I had finally reached the summit?
At the time, I had been wondering the same thing: I didn't yet feel the elation, the sense of accomplishment, because there was one thing missing from the puzzle: my name on the dotted line.
"Jack's Paperwork Curse" was still very much alive inside of me. Those unfamiliar with this line of thinking, briefly, I believe I (and my family) have a "curse" regarding important paperwork. No matter what, it seems, that if something big is happening in our lives, and a piece of paper is involved in facilitating this big thing, it will undoubtedly get lost. Maybe it'll get sucked into the turbine engine of a passing jet? Maybe it'll be eaten by a monkey. None of this would surprise me after nearly 30 years of being subjected to this curse.
So, my name not on a piece of paper, .... that was my hang up. Nothing, as far as I was concerned, was "a go" until I signed some paperwork. Until then, all bets were off.
When I received the phone call from the Lt. Col. stating that I had been accepted, there was a "but" involved. The "but" was, in order to complete the process, I had to sign my new contract BEFORE 20MAY, or it would negate everything and back to square one I'd go. So in effect, I had two weeks.
I made the necessary appointments, etc, and finally got up to MEPS (again) on Thursday.
I found out here too, from my new recruiter, Sgt. M, that the National Board only took 43% of applicants that made the cut from their regional BN Boards. From my BN Board, only 50% made the cut. I was in very exclusive company.
However, I was fully anticipating the worst: like getting up to MEPS and them not having a clue as to who I was or what I was doing there, or even worse than that, them not having my paperwork. I did this thing I do when I'm really stressed and can't go for a run someplace and just clear my mind. It's like my conscience mind sort of steps out of the building that is my brain and goes for a walk, leaving the rest of me to be this, semi-conscience body that can answer simple questions and do simple things, like pee in a cup or walk from one room to another.
Luckily, however, everyone at MEPS knows I've been there before and I'm pretty much front-loaded thru an accelerated process. I simply have my height and weight taken and sit down with the doctor again for two minutes. We have a very idle conversation while I sit in nothing but my underwear and I'm allowed to get dressed and sent to go wait in the "tv room."
Everyone else on this day, a motley collection of 17-22 year olds in terrible duds is going thru the motions; wait in line here, piss in this, give me your right arm, sign this, watch this. All while I'm sitting by myself in this break room-looking place with a big screen tv straight out of 1994.
After about twenty minutes, a civilian contractor comes in and looks at me. He smiles and I smile back (again, non-cognitive, brain's still down the street getting a coffee and newspaper) and he asks if I'd like the tv turned on.
The tv has this big sign on it that says "Authorized Personnel Only", meaning that only the folks at MEPS can touch it, turn it on, etc. I smile and nod my head, sure that each eyeball is probably going in a different direction.
He snaps on the tv and races thru the channels, right past ESPN and stops at FOX News. He then cranks the volume up to a level that would make anyone's ears bleed.
He smiles at me, turns and leaves. I'm left with FOX and Friends taking an ice pick to my ear canals.
Shortly after this, my brain returns. He sets his coffee and newspaper down, looks thru my eyes and listens thru my ears and starts screaming.
"What the fuck is all of this?!" My body, dumbly tries to explain the raping that took place a few moments earlier.
FOX News is like bad mash liquor for my brain. I just get dumber from watching the overtly biased lies. The first, and biggest lie, is that FOX News likes to tout it's journalistic objectivity. "We report, you decide," when really, it works in reverse for FOX News. They're pretty much deciding on what angle they're going to be reporting from and present it to the viewer as truth.
I'm stuck watching three or four... just, overtly conservative-leaning stories, that paint democrats as the type of people who would poison your drinking well before shoving you down it.
Soon, I'm called for and I head back to my liaison branch's office.
I sit down with a civilian contractor who is going to be my "guidance counselor" and he shows me my contract. There it is, all in black and white. I'm appointed to Basic Combat Training as an E4 (first promotion since I left CG Basic Training so many years ago), with immediate appointment to Officer Candidate School upon completion of BCT. There's some other doo-dads in there that we skim over, such as family benefit stuff, sexual harassment, homosexuality stuff, etc.
Of the gay stuff, the contractor's like: "do you want to review the policy?" And pulls out a laminated sheet of paper from under his desk.
"Um, no, I'm good, thanks," I say.
We press on. I e-sign all the pertinent blocks and he prints off a copy for me. He then smiles and reaches back for his phone. He's going to call up to the Dept of the Army and get me a ship date.
I'm so close, no hiccups, no snags, my brain is singing.
We're on hold for a few minutes and the contractor uses this time to small talk me. He's going to a Portland Sea Dogs game that night, bringing his kids, it's their first semi-pro baseball game. Someone from the DA picks up and he starts to jabbering.
But instantly, I can tell there's a problem. The contractor's face goes slack and he starts to say something like:
"Oh no, no no, no we're promoting him to E4. Yes, I know, but he has a waiver for that. ....He's already been approved for OCS by the National Board.... no, no.... ok... ok, I'll get it up to you ASAP..."
He hangs up the phone. My brain is no longer singing. I'm just sort of sitting in my chair, looking at him.... as Jill would call it, my shelf on my forehead is tipped forward over my eyes.
"What was all that about?" I ask, my voice dripping in contained rage. The contractor sighs and goes back to his computer and starts looking for something.
"Since you still belong to the Coast Guard," he starts. But I stop him.
"I was released, I had to jump thru a lot of hoops to get that release...." I say to him, referencing the four day scramble I undertook with phone calls to CG HQ last fall, the endless emails, etc. I wasn't about to do all of that again.
"No, I know," he starts, shutting me up. "But that release was only conditional. Technically, they still own you, and if they wanted to, they could re-activate you out of Inactive Ready Reserve if they wanted to.... unless you ship."
"But.... I want to ship," panic starting to grip my voice.
"And we want you to, too! But, the CG has the final say until you ship. The problem we have right now is that you're prior service, and the DA sees you right now as an E3 still. E3s can't go to OCS, that's why we're promoting you here, to E4. They just need a piece of paperwork that says that, that's all."
I pause for a second.
"But you can do that right, like, I'm not going to have to come back another day, right?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, I have the form somewhere around here, I just fill it out and put it into your packet electronically and there we go," he smiles. "It should only take half an hour, why don't you go back out and watch some tv....."
I get up and go collect my phone from my coat, and go to the one area I'm allowed to play on my phone (last time I was at MEPS I received contradictory information about where I could diddle my phone and where I couldn't). There's another tv in this lobby area, that someone's left on SportsCenter and I just wait.
Roughly an hour later, after becoming exceedingly nervous, I'm called back in and we start the process with calling up to the DA over again. This time we get someone who's more cooperative. After a bunch of going back and forth, they settle on a date.
Since my OCS has to run nearly seamlessly with my BCT, they had to find an OCS class first, and backtrack to a BCT class that matched closest to it. Ideally, we'll want to go to Benning in Georgia, since they train both BCT and OCS there, but really, I could wind up at any one of 5 locations around the US that does BCT, due to needs of the service, class sizes and scheduling.
A print off comes thru the fax and the contractor gets up to get it. He comes back, and looks at me.
"How does 27 June sound?" It sounds perfect. I tell him so.
It is perfect since it gives me about 6 weeks to get my shit together. Finances, odds and ends, loose ends, all that shit, I have time to get squared away before shipping and leaving my wife behind, by herself for nearly half the year. At the same time, I won't be waiting around all summer to ship either. It's the perfect fit.
"Good," he starts. "I processed this kid for OCS last week, and he turned the date down."
"Why?"
"Said he had something to do, he had plans... I told him, 'you know if you turn down this date, you're essentially turning down OCS, right? And they probably won't let you apply again, right?' and he was fine with that,"
Wow, what a prick.
He, the contractor, couldn't guarantee me an exact date for OCS because they "shift slightly" he said. But tentatively it's scheduled for 18SEP. BCT takes 9 weeks to complete, OCS is 14 weeks. If I'm doing my math right, I SHOULD be graduating by the end of Nov, early Dec. I know too, that the whole Army usually is off during the month of Dec around the holidays, and it's not likely that they'll have much training happening during that time.
So in short, I SHOULD be home for the holidays, maybe.
But it's official. Has it started to sink in yet? A little. We're starting to get busy around here, getting things lined up and squared away. Money seems to be the topic du jour, as there's likely going to be a gap in pay for the month of July. Hopefully not a very big gap, but a gap none the less. We have savings, luckily.
We'll keep you posted.
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