essay #2, which currently has no name

yay for art of the essay, a class i wish i had more time (more accurate would probably be more motivation) for. anyway. here's my current narrative essay. It's rather long and rather cheesey for my taste. not sure if i like it, not sure if it's crap, might scrap it all but probably won't for lack of will to write a different one. wow, i sound really apathetic. i guess that's just the mood i'm in.

"Front leaning rest position, move."

Oh Lord, not again.

My palms, already torn and scabbed, seemed to audibly cry out against this injustice. I placed them on the scalding, jagged concrete as tentatively as I dared, and kicked back my newly-shined boots with as much energy as I could muster. Here we go again.

"Down."

Every fiber of muscle in every inch of my body protested this movement. I willed my arms to bend, bend, bend, until they formed that 90-degree angle so mysteriously crucial to my success. My abdomen shook with the effort.

"Up."

The drill sergeants had long since given up telling us why they were making us push. They had long since stopped making up reasons, because we had long since figured out that most of their reasons were made-up.

"Down."

"Does the sun ever go down in this blasted place?" I thought as thirty-four miserable soldiers groaned simultaneously. I glanced to my left. The sight of such a perfect line of perfectly-bent elbows seemed to taunt me: feigned order in a world of such chaos and disarray.

"Private Weger, if I see you take your eyes off that bleeping floor one more bleeping time, you will find one bleeping-dirty boot print stamped on your bleepedy-bleeping forehead."

It must be written somewhere that the more profane language drill sergeants use, the more privates will obey their every command. At least, that was Drill Sergeant Wilson's take on life. Whe knew that the f-word was not only an interjection, but also an adverb, adjective, verb, nown, conjunction, gerund...indeed, if you were Drill Sergeant Wilson, you could likely hold an entire conversation using nothing but variants of this single four-letter word.

I chose to focus on a yellowish bird dropping near the tip of my left index finger rather than continue to be the target of Drill Sergeant Wilson's pistol of profanity.

"Up."

My left bicep threatened to collapse. My chest swayed dangerously close to the ground. Emphatically I willed the bicep to hold steady, afraid of what might result from its failure. A drop of sweat collected at the tip of my nose, suspended somewhere between earth and flesh. It fell gracefully to the black surface beneath me and evaporated instantly. Now it was part of the heavy, thick air from which my lungs labored so hard to gain fulfillment. I glared at the spot it had fallen with a kind of empty jealously, wishing that I too could vanish into thin air and float off to some foreign land...a land full of strawberry ice cream sundaes and 11:00 A.M. Reveille...Just let us go to bed...

"Down."

Sixty-eight elbows creaked into position.

"Up."

It occurred to me at this unfortunate moment just how funny the word "up" is when it's repeated so many times in a row. A laugh caught in my throat, and I tried unsuccessfully to fake a coughing attack. By the grace of God, at exactly that moment Drill Sergeant Wilson called us to attention. He began barking out orders, his eyes wide and menacing. None of us listened; it was the same every day: take a shower, scrub the floors, clean the toilets, wash your uniform - and lights out in fifteen minutes. It was like clockwork.

Sixteen minutes later, I lay in bed under a scratchy brown blanket, mischievously pointing a flashlight at brand-new pictures I had received from friends at home. There were friends on swing sets, friends baking brownies, friends wearing clothes that weren't green and sweaty...it seemed unnatural to imagine my face among theirs, wearing such a carefree, innocent smile. Instead I was trapped - trapped, for the first time, in a world that wasn't full of Disney movies, violin sonatas, and family game nights.

The night before, someone had stolen my socks. I had taken them off and put on my shower shoes, just to go empty my bladder and wash my hands. But when I returned, my socks were gone. Some delinquent had actually made off with my dirty, sweaty, reeking socks. Who does that? What kind of person actually feels the need to steal socks?

My rage newly stimulated at the thought of this crime, I decidedly kept my eyes open. It seemed fulfilling for some ridiculously reason just to lay there and feel sorry for myself. What had I gotten myself into? What was I doing here? People like me don't join the military. People like me go to college and get married and become moms and play in municipal tennis leagues on the weekends. It was bizarre to think of the person I had been just a few short weeks before, compared to the person I was now.

My thoughts wandered to something Drill Sergeant Wilson had said a few days before. I remembered it vividly; it was the only time in my memory that he had constructed an entire speech - or an entire sentence, for that matter - that was completely devoid of the f-word in any of its plentiful forms. We were stretched out in the usual push-up position, shaking with exhaustion and silently begging for mercy. He said it in a hushed tone, almost a whisper: "I don't care what crap your life has brought you. I don't care if you miss your mommy or your friends or making out with your boyfriend. I don't care what you think is unfair or unjust or disgusting or inhumane. If you want to survive these nine weeks, if you want to survive the next six years, if you want to survive every unfortunate day that flings itself into your path, then you are going to have to find something that makes you push."

Private Arrington's soft snoring from the bunk adjacent to mine interrupted my stream of thought. Arrington was a short blonde girl with a perpetual smile. She looked like she would better fit in a cheerleading squad than on a combat team. Arrington could be, at times, almost unnervingly optimistic. We could be pushing for forty minutes straight, and Arrington would be there, her round, freckled face red as a tomato, still grinning from ear to ear. "How's it going, Weger?" she'd whisper out of the corner of her mouth. "This is fun, huh?"
When Arrington was eleven, her mother had died. She was raised by her father, who was currently fighting on the front lines in Iraq. She sold everything she owned when she shipped out to training, because she had no one to keep it for her while she was gone. Everything she possessed was contained in the small locker beside her bunk.

As I watched Arrington's peaceful sleep, I recalled a conversation we'd had a few weeks earlier, when we had first arrived at training. I remember being fascinated by her unending stream of positive energy. What was it that made her push? What made her smile? What could she see, here, that would give her such amazing joy? I screwed up my courage and asked her, and I will never forget her reply. She looked me in the eyes, and a single tear ran down her cheek. She said, her voice quivering slightly, "How can I hope to make things happier by frowning at them?"

I stole one more glance at Private Arrington's bunk before I clicked off my flashlight. A new kind of peace settled over me as I pictured her smiling face. Only one more thought entered my brain before sleep took me over: "Bring it on, Drill Sergeant."