Like most mornings, I had smacked the snooze button of my alarm clock a few times before forcing myself out of the warm bed. Zombie mode had taken over as I completed the ritualized morning routine. I ate my cereal, skimming through a car magazine, trying to imagine owning the latest supercar. I neglected thinking about the inability to drive the car to my apartment’s designated parking space due to the extra large speed bumps and instead focused on accelerating to three times the speed limit faster than my car could get onto the highway. Being a fantasy, the cops were actually pulling over drivers for cutting people off rather than speeding, and people actually stayed out of the fast lane instead of being three cars wide with only a one-mile-per-hour difference.

I chuckled at the lack of realism and took my now-empty bowl to the sink. Glancing at the oven’s clock, I saw that I was actually a few minutes ahead of schedule.

I brushed my teeth in the bathroom and narrowly missed spitting the used toothpaste on my hand. It was early; I was still mostly asleep.

I lightly sprayed some cheap cologne on myself. The smell was too weak for me to notice, but I had learned the important life lesson “If you can smell your own cologne, it’s too strong” long ago.

Glancing at the mirror, I saw that my hair was still there, so I made my way toward the front door. I threw on my light jacket, ignoring the impending rain predicted by the news channel’s professional weather guesser. My wallet went into one pocket, and my under-used cellphone went into the other. From the counter, I grabbed my keys—no, the keys weren’t there. Why weren’t the keys there?

I checked my pockets and found the phone, the wallet, and a small ball of lint, but no keys. I checked under yesterday’s junk mail that still sat unopened on the counter. Nothing.

My brain, now just awake enough to be a threat to a five-year-old at tac-tac-toe, suggested checking the couch. Unfortunately, I didn’t even find spare change under the cushions. Another glance at the clock, and my semi-awake brain created the image of a cheap hourglass from a board game dropping the last few bits of sand.

The bus would be down the street in five minutes, so I rushed about fast enough to put a headless chicken to shame. Thought: maybe they were in my pants from yesterday. If this were Family Feud, my team would be saying, “Good answer; good answer.” And then the buzzer would sound loudly, flatly denying my guess. The pockets of yesterday were even devoid of lint.

My time was up. I had to rush out and just not lock the apartment door. The quest to find my keys would continue tonight, provided no burglar took the opportunity to relieve me of my worldly possessions, eliminating the need to find the keys. I charged out the door, swinging it shut without looking back.

The door slammed, and then it made a sound like someone had just bombarded it with a half-dozen pennies. Curiosity beat my sense of urgency, and I turned to see the origin of the sound.

Dangling from the deadbolt lock were my keys, still there from last night. They sparked two thoughts: Damn, I’m an idiot, and chicken sounds good for dinner tonight.

Like at any doctor’s office, I had to wait a while before seeing the doctor who was an Air Force captain. He had me remove the Rambo bandages from my elbows, a task not unlike pulling apart Velcro. He cleaned the wounds, which were freshly bleeding. Then he put large gauze pads on and wrapped that wide, tannish medical tape around my arms several times. It wouldn’t have been surprising if my hands started resembling those of a Smurf just before falling off completely. Of course, that would result in a medical discharge, which sounded nice. Two hands vs. freedom, hmm…

The captain told me to the procedure for taking care of my elbows and gave me the medical supplies I would need to duplicate what he had just done in order to freshly wrap the wounds twice a day. He told me all this specifically so I wouldn’t have to come back. “Don’t come back tomorrow,” he said. Clearly, he wasn’t impressed with the grinding of my elbows that I had accomplished or the Rambo bandages. The proper medical bandages were much more comfortable, though tight.

After the medical visit, I returned to my squadron and signed back in. The rest of that day was pretty typical of an average day in basic–terrible but bearable.

That night, our primary TI (the insane one) was briefing us and filling us in on various things. He addressed me and said, “You’re to visit the medical hall in the morning.”

Red flags went up; that was in direct conflict with what the doctor had said.

“Sir—” but I was cut off. He continued with other news and never gave me a chance to speak. A million thoughts fought for dominance in my head. The captain said don’t come back. The TI said do go back. A captain outranks a tech. sergeant. The TI directly oversees me. Maybe he was accidentally looking at this morning’s appointments instead of tomorrow’s. Was I supposed to go before PT? After? After breakfast? Surely, the TI in the morning would direct me when I needed to go.

The TI in the morning did not direct me when I was supposed to go, and I didn’t speak up. If there is one thing you learn in basic, it is to blend in, never asking questions and never volunteering

That night when the insane TI was back for briefings, it was the moment of truth. Near the end of the briefing, he asked me if I had gone to the medical hall. Shit.

“No, si—”

The volcano exploded. If you know those fireworks that create a concussion you feel in your lungs and set off all car alarms for a mile, then you know a fraction of the power of the yelling I had unleashed.

Insults. “I ordered you!” More insults. “Damned trainee can’t follow damn orders!” Even more insults.

I had to follow him to his office. Standing at the door, I watched him sit at the desk and begin searching through phone directories, listening to him tell me how much of a failure I was, how useless I was, how I shouldn’t have been born.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only failure. He couldn’t find the phone number and shot to his feet. His legs smashed into the keyboard tray, further infuriating him. He slammed the phone down, causing a prolonged artificial ring, as he charged out of the room with me right behind.

We left our wing of the building and took the stairs to the sister flight (the group of females with whom we shared TIs, drill practice, etc.), and he pounded on the door. The metal cover on the other side of the small glass window opened, and the trainee instantly recognized trouble.

“Sir, may I help you?”

“Just open the damn door!” the reply was shouted, though with a word harsher than “damn.”

“Sir, may I see your authority to enter?”

He slammed his ID up against the window.

“One green military ID card…” Her words were the automated voice of a precise procedure, which we were all told not to memorize but had burned into our minds regardless.

When we entered, the TI immediately yelled at her and demanded a 341. She had not shouted the mandatory warning for males entering, but I felt responsible for her error. I wanted to apologize, but I had to keep up as the TI marched to the office in the female flight.

I stood in the doorway once more as he took a seat at the desk and looked for the phone number. Having success, he dialed and transferred to the doctor.

He described me, useless trainee with torn-up elbows, and asked about the missed appointment. The person on the other end spoke for a bit before they both finished the conversation and hung up.

The TI looked directly at me. I stood perfectly still, at attention.

Through gritted teeth: “You’re lucky, trainee. He said you don’t have to come back.”

It was a small victory.

Some time after acquiring the dirt tan, I was able to go back to my squadron on the part of base that has buildings with solid walls. I’m not sure if the door guard said it or just wrote it on his face, but he clearly thought I looked like shit. Perhaps it was all the brown.

I took a painful, hot shower, every little cut reacting to the water that moved the dirt-turned-mud down my body. It was the best shower I took in basic training. It must have lasted a full seven or eight minutes.

Upon drying off, I discovered the reason my elbows had been demanding so much of my attention: They were a bloody red with “shit, that’s not good” white spots. I don’t know if the white was bone, ligaments, tendons, or fat—I was no doctor, just your average roast-beef-elbowed Joe—but I can tell you on a scale from one to ten they were at a “Holy Hell, just amputate!” level.

Despite the ample supply of bandaids my comrades offered when they returned, the gashes were too large to be covered with a complex jigsaw puzzle of bandaids, arranged in such a way as to prevent any sticky part from directly touching the wounds. I tried anyway. Fortunately, I obtained permission from my insane TI to see a doctor in the morning. I prepared by ripping one of my white shirts into strips with which to cover my elbows, opting out of the failing bandaid conglomerate.

The next morning, I went to the squadron’s command quarters (administrative area) in order to sign out. The military has paperwork for everything. As I was leaving, two TIs yelled at me.

I did my best to describe my dilemma without sounding like an idiot. I’m not sure that I succeeded, but the fresh strips of shirt at my elbows were no longer a clean white, lending some legitimacy to my plight.

They yelled at me some more before giving me permission to leave (i.e., “Get the hell out of here!”). As I was about to go out the door, I heard those TIs talking to each other. One muttered, “Damned trainee, thinks he’s Rambo.”

That statement filled me with more pride than anything else ever had in my entire life.

Warrior Week was the second-to-last week of basic training in the Air Force. During Warrior Week, you stay in tents, eat MREs, march in the mud, fire the M16, don gas masks, and do just about every other “manly” thing the Air Force has to offer. Not only did I have the wonderful honor of going through Warrior Week in August when the air of Texas felt like swimming in boiling water, but I had the distinct privilege of becoming exceedingly ill.

I was taken to a medical center in the back of a vehicle. I believe it was an ambulance, but being hot, sick, tired, and disoriented seems to have prevented the details from solidifying in memory. I do recall that there were two military guys who rode in the back with me and asked me questions. Though most were probably health-related, I distinctly remember being asked if I was German. Looking back, I suspect that it was simply curiosity asking, but at the time my failing brain was connecting it to World War II and somehow admitting that I was part German would result in me not being trusted.

Fortunately, GITMO was not an issue then and I made it to the medical center for what seemed like an excess of white pills. I was given an IV that forced near-ice into my veins, perhaps with a dose of anti-freeze, and my bladder felt the weight of the cold. My memory may be inaccurate, but I recall getting up to urinate about six hundred times that night. Each time, I had to wheel the IV with me. Each time, my illness and medically-induced stupor caused enough clumsiness that the needle wiggled around and blood started backtracking out the IV, up the tubing, and nearly into the bag. Each time, I simultaneously thought “Woah, cool” and “That might be bad.”

When I finally left the blood-stealing IV behind and returned to my tent, I largely spent the day alone. I took my medicine as required and broke the “don’t leave the tent alone” rule frequently for trips to the latrine. I was not completely alone as I met a scorpion in the latrine. Texas: home of humidity, scorpions, and a soon-to-break, flood-causing storm. Why wouldn’t you want to live there?

When I later met with a doctor out at the Warrior Week area, I had another honor bestowed upon me: I was yelled at for taking my medicine at incorrect intervals. When I had left the medical center the night before, I was given two or three containers of medicine. One was supposed to be taken every twelve hours. One was every four. And I’m not even sure if there was a third.

The man yelled at me, threw the medicine in the trash, and didn’t want to listen to me pointing out the labels on the medicine bottles. Fortunately, the side effect of a relative overdose of the unknown medication was that I was looking at the world through such a distant fog I considered laughing at this man. He looked upset.

Skipping ahead (don’t worry, there’s always more yelling in the military), I ended up having to go back to Warrior Week to make up some of what I missed. If you think basic training sucks (and you should), imagine the fun of doing the “warrior” part surrounded by strangers. Being the odd man out, I was last in line for the 100-yard low-crawl. At least, it was supposed to be a low-crawl, but it ended up being a high-crawl to avoid drowning. You see, that wonderful storm had filled up the trenches with mud. Rather than low-crawling over some dirt, we were high-crawling in a canal of mud on what felt like gravel. My elbows throbbed, but I pushed on. At one point, there was a tree branch or root just over the trench. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but the 1-2 feet of mud required me to submerge my face and push through.

What waited on the other side was not a line of short-skirted cheerleaders shouting how wonderful I was. It wasn’t even a pair of pant-wearing cheerleaders whispering encouragement. No, it was a TI shouting that I had to go back to the start and make another trainee who had started late actually move. Apparently, the trainee was unaware of what a joy this adventure was and had frozen up. Either that or it was such a joy that he wanted to share it with someone. Asshole.

So I dove in at the start just behind Trainee Freeze and I shouted words of encouragement. I suspect my words were more along the lines of “Move, move, move! You can do it! Just push it out!” with a hint of irritation (a big hint) rather than a polite “Sir, you are certainly capable of accomplishing this task. Keep your head up and take it an elbow at a time. Your pace is very adequate.” My “You can do it!” was either convincing or filled with murderous intent (maybe that’s what made it convincing), because he began making steady progress.

Some time after that, we were given the chance to clean up, which meant strip, scrub with a towel, and put on a different uniform. I scraped at my elbows with clenched teeth, expecting the towel to reveal bruises or cuts. The pain was extreme and the grime was not being persuaded to come off by the towel that felt more and more like sand paper. Our time was cut short by another thunderstorm and many of us were forced to accept the temporary dirt tan: the mark of a warrior.

Some of the writing has actually turned out to be relatively good, so I thought I’d share a bit here (though maybe I am biased since they are my memories). The part I’m going to share is essentially a three part story, so I’ll split it into three posts published at 8:00am (Pacific) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I’m going to call the story overall “Elbows” (which will make more sense after you read it) and each part will have a subtitle to go with that. I’ve never been good with names…

“Elbows” takes place during basic training in late August, 2001 at Lackland AFB, Texas. The first part is really just a setup to explain why the other two parts happened. The overall story is a chronological series of memories from basic training, so there are some terms that most people probably won’t know.

• 341 – Air Force form 341, a small disciplinary form filled out by trainees and carried on them at all times so a TI can just say, “Give me a 341″ and the TI only has to write in what the trainee did wrong. Having 341s pulled could result in “recycling,” which meant the trainee would spend a week or more additional time in basic training. Essentially, 341 = bad.
• crawl – a low-crawl is when you are all the way squished against the ground, elbows to the side with hands ahead, and one ear to the ground to keep the head down; a high-crawl puts the elbows underneath instead of to the sides (see images for low-crawl and high-crawl for a better idea)
• flight – Air Force term for a group of people (2+ elements makes a flight, 2+ flights makes a squadron, etc.), typically flights consisted of about 50-60 people in basic training
• M16 – the primary rifle of the United States military
• MRE – meal, ready-to-eat, essentially a field ration; see the Wikipedia MRE article for more info
• PT – Physical Training, the daily exercises (running, pushups, sit-ups, etc.)
• TI – Training Instructor (the Air Force equivalent of a Drill Sergeant)
• Trainee – the (often degrading) term used to describe the people who are going through basic training

I actually eliminated the use of a lot of military terms to try to make the story more accessible to people who haven’t gone through the experience, but you can let me know if I left anything in that isn’t clear. I tried to limit the use of swearing, but I felt it necessary in some places. Constructive feedback is appreciated.

I stayed up far too late last night to be waking up to the sound of my alarm at four in the morning. I’ve never been able to just go to sleep earlier when I needed to wake up extra early. It’s a problem like misplaced eggs. You can spend a lot of time up front to fix things or you can wait a few days, when the situation really starts to stink, and then the solution presents itself.

Not that I have ever misplaced eggs before…

Did you know birds chirp at four in the morning? What the hell is there to chirp about this early? I’m convinced that other animals have figured out the secret to life but humans still aren’t even looking. But at least we have opposable thumbs that we can target with our hammers.

I checked in my cupboard, but I didn’t find the secret there, so I grabbed a bowl and some cereal from the secretless cupboard and briefly wondered why cupboards have doors. After deciding that it keeps carpenters employed and that people like to put obstacles in the way of their goals, I added the cereal to the bowl and then completed my masterful breakfast with milk from the fridge (see, that is something where doors make sense) and a spoon from the silverware drawer.

I carried the breakfast and the box of cereal to the table. Laboriously crunching away with less and less noise as the milk slowly defeated the crisp cereal, I read the words on the cereal box. You never know, the manufacturer may have discovered the secret, but it’s a long shot since they can’t even figure out how to keep me from being hungry an hour after eating their cereal.

If you’re wondering what cereal I eat, don’t waste your time; it’s not integral to the story. I buy whichever kind has the highest number next to “calories.” I don’t understand how food manufacturers can keep tricking people into buying their food by advertising that it has fewer calories. That’s like a gas station advertising “Pay for two gallons and receive just one!” I guess most people have really fallen for the “starving ribcage with legs and a square foot of fabric that costs enough to feed me for a week” look. Animals are smart enough to eat every chance they have. That brings the score to animals: 2, humanity: 0.

At this point, I should probably apologize for not warning you about my tendency to ramble—though I guess I just did warn you. And if you haven’t figured it out by now anyway, you’re probably still wondering what cereal I eat. Besides, how was I supposed to know that you’d start the book at the beginning instead of this paragraph? Of course, you could be one of those people who reads the last page first, but I threw that page in there because of people like you. It’s not really connected to the last chapter.

Wow, all these pages and I’m no closer to the interesting part of the story. And those damned birds are still gloating. And people who think I shouldn’t start sentences with conjunctions want to throw this book across the room. But they can’t, because they wasted all their energy with trivial constructs. And they’re no closer to finding the secret of life either.

The end… of chapter one.