| 5 years pt 1 .... There is a period of about 5 years that I have erased from my memory. Well, that is not exactly true. There is a period of about 5 years from which I suffer selective amnesia. For 5 years I managed to do something that is a freak occurrence. It is a feat that few people can rival. It is something that prides me as much as it shames me. It was high school, and I managed to stay behind 5 years in a row. For 5 years I set records in failing grades. Records for detention hours clocked. Records records records. Was intelligence the problem, did I suffer from a low IQ? Don’t know, maybe. What I do know is that during those 5 years I had different priorities which conflicted with my duties as a student. After 5 years I found myself working during the day and heading to a “night school” where others who found themselves in similar scholastic predicaments could point and laugh. No fun I tell ya, no fun! It was one evening, after I had fallen asleep during math class for the third night in a row, that the plan was conceived in my head. Master plan; change of scenery! As with most men who reached the noble age of 18 in my country, I too had gotten an invite to join our glorious army, mandatory that is, the invite. It had been a year since my “testing” and the wonderful news that the armed forces had a spot reserved for me had reached me via mail a couple of months prior. Can you spot the irony in this? First time I pass when all I want to do is fail!!! Not being one who would take a 14 month challenge with a grin, I lined up my options. One, I could undergo a sex change operation and start a new career as a she-male porn star. Two, take a retesting and hope to fail the army’s strict guidelines of what makes for a good soldier. Or I could just up and leave the country to never ever return again (I had gotten an invite to stay with an aunt in Australia…). I took option #2, with #3 as a back up plan… a she-male porn star I would never be as I have a chronic flatulence problem. Upon reaching home I told my mom about the master plan; get a retesting, should I fail then I would head into that great adventure called the army, should I pass I would take my aunt up on her invite. Or is that the other way around? Pass go to army, fail go to Australia?. - So what you’re telling me is that school is out of the picture? - Yup… I wanna be a dropout! - Okay. How cool is that? A mom embracing her son’s desire to dropout to either join the army, or become a she-male porn star! Oh wait, I forgot, I wasn’t to be one of those… There are a couple of ways one can fail a testing and thus earn a one way ticket out of the army. Tests can prove that you’re a homicidal maniac, but then again this will show up on your medical files for the rest of your life. I had heard this urban legend about a guy who had stuck peanut butter up his ass, when the doctor started his proctology examination (yes, they will ask you to bend over and cough) the guy stuck his finger up his ass to remove it and, well, you know. Again, not something that you would want haunting you the rest of your life. Then there was the score of physical attributes that could get you to be a headliner in a carnival side show; third nipple in the wrong place, third eye… pretty much a third of anything that shouldn’t be there. But I was lacking in the third department being the second son in the family. All that I had to go for was a failing based on height. Most of my life I have been slightly taller then the rest of the peeps in the class. I had trouble finding pants that assured me correct length; I was walking on high water most my high school life. Walking underneath doorposts had been greeted by bumps and scratches and many “God Damns”! so my height was going to get me a ticket out of the army, out of the country, and definitely out of the shitty situation my life was turning into! The eve before the second testing my mom took her sewing lint to measure my height. She unraveled that soft plastic chord, made a mark on the wall where my head apexes, and there was silence. Games in golf have ended because a person was not able to put the ball, missing the hole by a fraction of an inch. Or what about races where one contestant manages to just barely cross that line by the width of an elephant’s pubic hair! The bar was at 2 meters, I measured in at 1.995. Finally I could understand the frustration an athlete has when just missing the gold. That night I slept on my back, and the next morning I moved very carefully. I reached the barracks where the testing was happening, knocked on the door and was greeted by some naval guy. Spiffy white uniform with golden thingies on the shoulder. He knew straight away what I was there for, ushered me into a changing room and asked me to take off my shoes. I was then directed to a measuring contraption standing by the wall, placed my feet on the markings marked with feet and inhaled deeply. The slide came down, the man in the spiffy white uniform with the golden thingies on the shoulder leaned in to read the measurement… - Mom, it’s me - How did it go? - 2 mm mom, 2 mm… - And? - Guess I am going to have to learn how to chuck a shrimp on the barby while singing waltzin Mathilda!!!! I had passed, beaten the system. Now all I needed was some cash, a plane ticket and off I would go to the land of kangaroos, crocodiles and boomerangs. The land where men are men and beers are drank out of oil cans! I was heading down under… 2b continued …. |