Sunday, March 23, 2008

[ReCap} Book Of Blood: Sub-Episode I

"Flight was a remarkable feat. Sustainment was another. Recovery
over love? ...a feat not yet accomplished."


"Rock Dirt"


Today was the first, and best sunday we had ever seen-- the first sunday of Area Beautification. By now, I had gained a couple of friends, one in particular I will call Gecci. Now, Gecci is an Americanized Jamacan, living in South Carolina, somewhere south-east of Camden. This particular area I know quite well because my aunt lives somewhere near there-- it's ghetto, and country as hell. This fact now being obviously said, you would notice he and myself find alot in common, me being born of this kind of neiborhood, and he living there most of his life. Personally I find him hillarious in many ways because he's a joker in all manner of ways including when he's being serious. Today, we were tossing jokes after being released from formation to re-dress into our PTs and work gloves... this of course we do every day because we have nothing better to do with our lives 80% of the day that's left when we aren't getting smoked or taught something, so he comes up with the grand idea to bring his shovel (aka E-Tool) along with him.

Personally, I could've cared less what he did or why he bought it to this nice little trek back to the drill pad for our brefing, but it did interest me that he was the only one with an E-tool but I didn't bother to mention it because it seemed the Cadre cared as much as everyone else did-- very little or none at all. So we got brefied on what would be known as Area Beautification, the process of doing demenial tasks to include but are not limited to; picking up tall grass and laying it with small grass, seperating rocks from the sand, raking the PT field (sand and grass with no trees, so we were just raking straight lines the entire length of the field), and even moving pebbles from one spot to another ...far across to the other side of the company area, oh and don't let me forget our favorite one, picking up any and every peice of trash, big or small, all around the company. So, being this the one sunday of many more later on which we'd get our hands full of sand, trash, grass, and rocks, Gecci and I start conversing about how sucky our current mission was, and just so happens our DS walks by. Usually, when an NCO or something of high enough rank over you to gain your immediate respect passes, you'd show the proper respects, and sound off with something, be it a "hoah", or your motto, ours being "Rock Force". So when he passes, we both snap to attention, then parade rest, and sound off... sounding something like this;

DS walks by...
Me: Hoah Drill Sergeant!
Gecci: Rock Dirt, Drill Sergeant, rock dirt!
Me: ...(thinking "what the fuck?") *tries to hold on to dear life, avoiding busting out laughing*
Drill Sergeant: Ah shutup.
Me: Hoah Drill Sergeant! (thinking "had to get that last word... had to get that last word...")

By the time he'd passed, I could no longer hold it, I was damned near on the ground laughing at Gecci in disbelief that he'd just said what he'd said and I wouldn't have belived it had I not been standing right beside him when he did. Somehow, after I started BCT, the most simplistic stuff caught my attention, and the smallest things entertained me, maybe it was the showing of my dangerously-lowered standards, or maybe it was just because I had alot of unknown stress built up from BCT alone to cause me to exert it in any way possible, this I wasn't sure of, but I could assure you it was funny as shit to me and from then on, every sunday until graduation, I'd sounded off with "Rock Dirt" after the brefing formation after lunch before we started our detail of area beautification.

So what of this nice little phrase he'd created for a reason which I never really asked? never really know, I guess... but then again, who knows what may happen next time, huh?

~Sayin (Ollie)

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