My joy of having gone through college was short lived as I was assigned a tour of duty in the desert in some place called Eye-Rack. I couldn't understand how I was to study anything marine-like while stuck out in the desert. Worst of all, I was to stand in front of a shack labeled "Latrine" all day doing what my teacher called guard duty. I could smell what was in the shack and I figured it didn't need guarding, so I wandered around looking for the place the guys were always raving about so that I could see what a whore was. I was strolling around asking where the whore was when the teacher that told me to guard the shack appeared and asked me to tell him what I thought I was doing. I told him that the stuff in the shack didn't need any guarding and that I was looking for a whore. If I thought the teacher that meet the bus at camp had an explosive temper, this guy made him look calm. I was taken to a place called the brig and after they did a courts-martial I was told I had failed and I was to return home.
Failed! I didn't know what I was going to tell my folks, folks that only weeks before looked the happiest they had ever looked when the old lady that turned out to be my girlfriend told them I was going to the front and would probably be a casualty. I figured my folks never expect me to sit in the first row and do well, so that the stuff my girlfriend said really brightened them up. Now I was going to return to them a failure, they would really be disappointed in me for not being a casualty, whatever one of those is.
I waited in the brig room for weeks and finally got a ride home. While I was waiting I concocted a story to explain why I didn't do well and be a casualty so I didn't get into trouble. I got off the bus and walked into the house, seeing the inside of it for the very first time, when my brother returned from a room called "work" and nearly passed away when he saw me standing forlornly in the living room. He said that mom and dad would somehow manage to pass bricks through their digestive tracts when they got home.
I was very excited, for the brick passing trick seemed impossible to me, and I was thinking they would somehow use mirrors when at that moment they entered the house and stood stock still before me with their mouths wide open. Thinking this a new social custom that had sprung up while I was away at college, I looked back at them with my mouth open equally wide. After an interval, my dad asked what I was doing home and why wasn't I at the front where I ought to be. I told him my carefully prepared story about how I had found a whore and after getting lucky, had caught some crabs. The college immediately graduated anyone lucky to catch crabs and so there I was. This story didn't seem to have the intended effect as my dad turned very pale and my mother fainted dead away after murmuring something about how could anyone screw something like that. I guess she meant my girlfriend and was wondering why anyone would want to up and leave me. After my homecoming and reunion with the family, I moved back into my room out back by the pigpen and sat around for a while trying to think what all had happened to me. I was very happy to be back in my homeroom.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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6 comments:
I dont know wether to laugh or cry
agrees with aus.....
I'm going to have to laugh. The eye-rack, whore, guarding the latrine, old lady girl friend, brick passing, and new custom of mouth wide open all have me cracking up here. I will admit, though, that I have no clue what to make of the group of stories as a whole...
dittos punkn. We were, however, forwarned in the September 17th entry that he was in a dark place when he originally wrote this (he'd used the term "some considerable personal difficulty") and that the tale would be "a rather grim, unhappy bit of prose, expressing near total dissatisfaction with life in general, and the state of mine in particular". That said, one must expect that we'll hit the blackest and most unsavory parts of his life. In depression..you get to the point when things are so dark and deep that the only way to get through it is to laugh at it...otherwise you will totally lose yourself to it.
Thank you iggy, for trusting us enough to share these innermost thoughts.
Yes, Styx, that is so true. I agree with everything you say. I have very little knowledge of depression - just what I've read. But, having survived many other crisis in my life, I've found humor to be the best medicine. I would imagine the same might hold true for depression. Recognizing the darkness, I have to laugh at the humor. Laughing with (of course) not at (never!)
I find it interesting that Bubba was sent to Iraq, and the story was written around 1988 (20 years ago), before Desert Storm. Unless Iggy was off by a couple years and he wrote it in 1990, which would fit the timeline.
Nice story Bubba made up for why he had returned home, lol.
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