I could have been the Army’s next super soldier.
Then they told me about military time.
As it
turns out, military time is one unconventional, messed-up way to tell time, which
meant I had to reconsider my options. In the end I had to make a hard choice
and it broke my heart. Uncle Sam was going to be down one fearless protector
with unlimited killing power because of some dumb time bullshit that probably
involves the metric system.
I
remember day one of boot camp like it was yesterday. When Drill Sergeant Tyson shouted
in our faces that he would systematically obliterate our willpower, take our
sorry asses apart and reassemble the pieces into men worthy of dying for the
greatest country on earth, I was totally onboard. And when he went on to state
that we didn’t deserve the uniforms we were wearing and if it were up to him,
we’d all be dressed in nothing but granny panties soaked with our own terrified
piss, I did a quick fist pump when he was looking the other way. But when he
spat out some nonsense about turning the lights out at some impossible time
called “21 hundred hours,” I had to raise my hand and ask for clarification.
Perhaps
I was out of line, but when I first heard about a time that’s over 12-something,
with no AM or PM at the end, that stunned me a lot more than being told I was a
lower form of life than plankton. And maybe I did have a thing or two to learn
about respect, as Drill Sergeant Tyson roared at a deafening volume directly into
my ear. But he was wrong about one thing: Cleaning 50 dirty toilets with a
toothbrush didn’t teach me any lesson. All I learned from the guy who explained military time to me while he sat on a toilet as I cleaned other toilets is that the whole concept is trash.
I know that because someone pooping in one of the toilets next to the one I was cleaning explained the whole thing to me.
I know that because someone pooping in one of the toilets next to the one I was cleaning explained the whole thing to me.
I
know Einstein and the wheelchair scientist had their theories on the subject,
but think of it this way: Time is like cooking a hamburger patty. Each day
begins as raw meat that time puts on the grill. Then there are two sides to
cook in equal amounts, the AM half and the PM half. That’s how you get the
burger/ day done just right.
But military
time just cooks the same side of the burger the whole day, never flipping it
over from AM to PM. And just like a burger prepared that way, it makes me sick.
Case closed.
I explained
this to Drill Sergeant Tyson after four hours of cleaning toilets, but he only
told me to get out of his Goddamn sight and pack my bags for “Bull Sucker, Utah”
or “wherever the hell” I came from. He was way off. I happen to be a proud
native of Hicksville, Ohio.
Here
in Hicksville, I sometimes wonder about what might have been had I become an
elite war machine for the US Army. Would I be awarded the Purple Heart several
times or just once? My stomach turns with regret and expired Gummy Worms when I
dwell on that.
If
not for the mumbo jumbo of “22:25” and whatnot, I’d be honored to fight battles
in the Middle East, and equally honored to retreat from those same battles to
do the bidding of another country’s authoritarian government, because they have
information that would blackmail our president. If not for military time, I’d
be the first man to take a bullet for that president.
So
the Army can keep those sick comedy roasts the drill sergeants put on, and
their awesome supply of grenades that I am desperately try to score on the
black market, because I understand the right way to tell time in this one nation
under God, and I know how to cook a burger.
That
reminds me. I’m late for my shift at Burger King. It started five minutes ago,
at 6:00 PM, not 18 hundred hours. And until that gets through to the US
military, they’ll have to defeat ISIS without me.
--Sincerely pissed and late for work,
Former Cadet Freddie Bibbs
