Recruiters are the Army's car salesman

            Michael Moore got it right.  In Fahrenheit 9/11, when he showed the two knucklehead Marine recruiters running around the parking lot, chasing down unsuspecting poor kids and trying to talk them into joining.  He got that part right on the button.  Everyone said “Oh, that’s just ridiculous.”  Well, at seventeen years old I got trapped in that sales pitch, and it was exactly what I saw on the silver screen. 

            I’ll begin by stating, without giving too much background that I was from a poor family.  And I don’t mean the “My parents never got me a car” type of poor background.  I mean the lived in a house with dirt floors, wallpaper for insulation and possums crawling up through the hole in the back of the house type poor.  I was also very immature at 18…like a 12 year old mind in an 18 years old body type mature, and  I was also beaten as a very young child…not beaten…more like tortured.  Like, Lifetime television movie type tortured. 

            But we’re not going to delve into that aspect of my life.  Not yet.  Maybe not ever.

            All we need to know is in the Army’s eyes this made me a prime candidate. 

            My first and only recruiter, who I only remember by the name “Markus”, approached me in the summer of my junior year.  I believe it was by phone at first.  I remember how scared I was at that age.  My GPA in high school was only a measly 2.69.  I had only one real extracurricular.  My parents couldn’t afford to feed me, let alone give me a college education.  I’d also never had a girlfriend.  I had one free ride year of school left, and then as my mom put it “You’re getting a suitcase for your eighteenth birthday and then you’re out the door.”

            And, lo and behold, here comes a man on the phone who says he can give me an education, money, food, AND chicks.  Shit...it’s a wonder I held out as long as I did. 

            Once I expressed interest, it was over before I even knew what happened to me.  It began with the Taco Bell.  I was underweight, and my recruiter needed me to put on some pounds if I was to pass an entry physical.  I mentioned one day that my favorite restaurant was Taco Bell, and it was settled.  Good ole Markus was shoving free Taco Bell down my throat every week.  He also bought a computer from my Dad’s business, and kept my parents from sending me to jail. 

            Of course, nowadays, especially after Fahrenheit 9/11, all of this would be illegal.  I didn’t realize this, but the Army actually had to take a day off of recruiting everywhere, just to train their recruiters that they were NOT allowed to do this type of conduct in any situation. 

I don’t know why they came after me.  You could not for one second tell me I was the optimal recruit.  It wasn’t like the Army looked at me and saw the potential for a bloodthirsty killer 100% loyal to his country.  And it wasn’t like I kept any of my discontent a secret either. 

            The thing was, I was in a moralistic, near pacifist phase.  I didn’t believe in the military, didn’t believe in war and killing, and was barely even strong enough to lift my own weight.  I stated this numerous times on my entry interviews, security clearance interviews, etc.  I simply did not agree with the way our country treated the rest of the world, and could not proclaim 100% allegiance to the cause. 

            Yet, each time I told them this, there was a recruiter or interrogator who would badger me until I agreed to say that I was loyal to the American values, and that I would pick up a weapon and kill if I needed to. 

And the sales pitch from my recruiter…JUST like the movie.  “Do you like boxing…you know the army has a boxing team?  You like writing poetry?  Oh, the army is full of writers.  You’ll be writing all the time.  Did you know, when you’re in the Army, and you go to the club and throw your dog tags out, that chicks run after you?  You took one year of German in high school?  Oh, you might be able to be a German linguist.  Then you can make tons of money!“

Honestly, I wasn’t really concerned with the chicks, and the money was attractive, but I was sure I could find more elsewhere. 

            It was that damn college education that they got me on…$40,000+ free dollars to learn whatever I wanted. 

            At the time what I wanted was to become a schoolteacher.  Times have sure changed.

            So, I signed up.  I honestly don’t even remember when or how I signed up, or even how much college money I signed up for, which goes to show how much I really paid attention to this drastic life altering decision. 

            17 years old, not even a senior in high school yet, and I had committed my life to them.  My entire senior year was horrible.  I still lived in the same abusive environment.  My pipe dream of running away to some far distant land to reestablish myself as a famous actor or writer had disappeared, as in my eyes; there was a bounty on my head if I chose to not fulfill my obligations to the US military.  I felt like I was a ticking time bomb. 

            Of course, unknown to me, I could have just not showed up.  I talked one of my lackeys at the time, a guy named Roger, into joining with me, so that I could get promoted.  Yeah, I was shameless.  But I was also seventeen, and my morals were only twelve.  The guy joined reluctantly, but later dropped out of high school three months before graduation.  My recruiter, and I, never heard from him again. 

            I thought he would end up in prison for going AWOL.  Turns out, if you quit before you actually sign up, there’s nothing they can do to you.  All that hogwash my recruiter was telling me about possibly being “AWOL” was just a pile of intimidating bullshit. 

            Senior year continued…counting down towards July 7, 1998, that gawdawful date where I would lose my soul and sense of self to the military machine, despite fighting against it so much.  I managed to swindle a promotion by signing up for a year of JROTC at my high school…where I constantly tormented all the other children who lived in this breeding ground of trenchcoat mafia/future Nazi’s.  In fact, I had a term for my fellow classmates in the JROTC program.  (JROTCS = GayNAZIS). 

            Time passed…I was the lead in the school play…I got my first kiss from the Assistant Director…I become very passionate about my writing…I felt tragic, depressed, and suicidal that final year…My friend lost his brother in a car accident…Some very mean kids became very nice to me, when they realized what I was heading towards…I was dealing with the fact that life was going to change…Not a little but drastically…

            I graduated.

            There were two more significant events in that final month between graduation and leaving home.  The first, almost destroyed my chances of joining the Army.  The second solidified my decision to get the hell out of that shitty little life I had been mired in for eighteen years. 

            I got in a fight with my parents.  I can’t remember why, how, or what it was about, but blows were thrown, and the police were almost called.  Luckily, my mom called the recruiter first.  He sped towards the house going as fast as his little rental car would go, and took control of situation.  Cooler heads prevailed, and my record stayed clean. 

            I got in ANOTHER fight with my parents.  This one over a huge birthday party we had planned.  Over thirty classmates were invited.  The idea was to have a big BBQ in a park nearby.  At the last minute, my dad refuses to let us BBQ, an argument ensues, and culminates in my Dad stepping through the BBQ, crushing it.  I locked myself in my room, and my relatives began screaming at each other and taking sides.  By the time everyone came to terms, and got to the park, no one was there. 

            Now, I was not exactly Mr. Popularity, so I’m banking on the fact that no one probably would have shown up anyways, let alone hung around the extra hour and a half it took us to finish fighting and arrive at the party.  But if they had they would have been greeted by the sight of my Dad fist fighting with my Grandfather and Uncle over the way they treated my mother as a child, and the rest of my relatives staring at each other in anger and silence. 

            I myself, sat in the corner of it all, realizing how dreadful this stupid little hick life was, and that I was destined for bigger and better things.

            It wasn’t until months, and years later, that I would realize how much I would miss that stupid little hick life. 

            Of course, by that point, I was busy standing in the middle of a basic training field, stabbing a pillow on a stick with a rusty bayonet attached to my M16 shouting:

            “To kill! To kill without mercy Drill Sergeant!!!”,