The Only Stupid Question is the Unasked One

In the blazing heat of the Oklahoma sun there I was standing in formation a camo-clad young private who more times than had no idea what was going on. There were so many people in formation if you were in the back it was hopeless all that was heard was the shouts of drill sergeants. Probably yelling at some private for doing something stupid, But if you were in the front of everyone couldn’t blend into the mass of cookie-cutter copy privates. In the front you had to constantly check not only yourself are my thumbs on the seam of my pants, is my patrol cap level with the marching surface, are my patches on straight? All these thoughts run through your head no matter how much you tried to be perfect there is always gonna be a collective sigh when all you hear is half right face, front leaning rest position move Everyone always thinks alright who wasn’t paying attention which is secretly everyone. Whoever is brave enough to dare ask a question gets pulled from the tide of uniform people and is singled out as an individual like throwing blood in the water while being surrounding whether you like it or not you have everyone’s attention. With all the trained killers who Learned to kill with spoons in Benning suddenly all eyes trained on you with a sort emotionless gaze that instantly makes you uncomfortable and makes you forget your question. Standing there, an awkward silence fills the air and you quickly try to figure out what the hell to say, finally, you say whatever pops into your mind and something along the lines of private did your mother drop you on your head when you were born, I hope so, then you would at least have an excuse. Then you just sit down defeated as the person next to you is falling asleep because there were thirty seconds of silence. Again oh some private thinks he can sleep. What, did you not get enough sleep ? or have you been sitting still for too long ? too easy private, too easy. Don’t worry I got you, room on your feet. Half-right face front leaning rest position move. All the privates get down into the pushup position pushing chairs out of the way because for some sick reason we couldn’t just move and do it in the aisle. They probably would not have noticed the sleeping kid if not for that one pointless question. That happened day in and day out
All of our problems or things we got in trouble for stem from ignorance and being too afraid of asking but that fear for also not asking was very real as well, if we ask a question that has already been asked and hearing those dreaded words half right face in the first few weeks this happened all the time just because we didn’t know any better. We didn’t ask questions and was punished for it. This all came to a boiling point when we would clean our living area to the standards of the drill sergeants. This is the point where we were scared to even look in there direction never mind actually ask them anything, so because of our living area known as the bay was not to there standard. To catch the privates off guard the stormed our bay during personal time screaming and yelling everyone just got on the ground knowing what was going to happen. The drill sergeants then proceeded to bring in sandbags and dump them all over the bay. But there was a lot of privates missing many were in the showers and because there were twenty-something grown men were singing the Barbie theme song they did not hear all the yelling. As we were enjoying a nice shower at the end of the day someone runs in yelling drill sergeant wants everyone out we got thirty seconds to get out or he is coming in. we quickly stop singing, most were annoyed that we didn’t get to finish our choreographed dance to the song we shouldn’t have done that encore of Baby by Justin Beaver…. I’m sure most thought. Knowing what was waiting for us we all proceed to rush out some had enough common sense to put on their night clothes many like myself did not get that far and ran out in towels. We proceed to do push-ups in the sand for a half hour for something as simple as not asking what needed to be clean. Just because the top of lockers were not dusted.

Photo on Foter.com