Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to attend a military "boot camp" will no doubt have many hilarious stories to tell. I've sat around the table with those who have been there and done that and we have shared numerous anecdotes and yarns that happened to us there. Can I tell you one of them?
I was in the U.S. Coast Guard boot camp on Government Island in Alameda, California. It must have been around January 1971. It was a small island in what they called the estuary. I had no idea what an estuary was at the time. To me it looked like we were in the mouth of a river. That river was full of nasty water and slimy mud. You could run from one end of the island to the other.
There are strange customs that are followed when in Coast Guard boot camp. One is the custom of being inspected prior to eating a meal. As a company (usually about 80 or so men) you must pass by the Officer of the Day (OOD)and be checked to make sure that you were clean enough to eat at his "mess hall". There are uniforms of the day that must be worn. Everyone must be in the same uniform and that uniform must be neat and clean. If one man, just one single man is not neat and clean and in the proper uniform then everyone else must wait on him to correct his problem before they can eat.
I had always thought of California being a nice warm place to live. In January of 1971 that was not the case. The uniform of the day was our "wool blues", pants, jumpers and white hats. We stood there in the cold as the OOD walked among us making sure we were not a health hazard to the rest of the camp.
,,
As we stood waiting, we notice in the company up ahead of us that there was some commotion. The OOD must be very upset. He was screaming, yelling, and using words that a good Christian boy from Alabama was certainly not use to hearing. It turns out that one of the young men in the company ahead of us had a dirty ring around the inside of his white hat. This was a total disgrace to the Coast Guard and very disturbing to the OOD. So everything and everyone stopped while he sent this recruit running back to his barracks to obtain a clean hat.
The smell of the food from the mess hall drifted between the building and down the streets. The cold from off the Alameda Bay water crept into our bones as we stood at attention, waiting and waiting. Finally the young man returned with a "different" white hat. Now, now we will get to eat. Oh no.
This hat was not clean enough either. And so, you guessed it, back again, as we all stood at attention in the cold, ran the young Coastie. But apparently none of his hats were clean enough. This greatly disturbed the OOD.
"If you are going to look like a Pig" the OOD screamed "then you will act like a pig". There was a puddle of water standing near the roadway where we were waiting. "Get over there in that puddle Mr. Pig and act like a pig" The young man quickly made his way to the puddle and with his wool blues and his "not white enough hat" lay down in the puddle and begin to wallow. It was all we could do not to look and not to laugh. But this wasn't good enough.
"If you are going to look like a pig and act like a pig then you are going to sound like a pig", the OOD yelled to the top of his voice. Obediently, the young man begin to make "pig" noises. "Oink, oink, oink", apparently this was the only pig sounds he knew. I don't know how long he had to stay there, looking, acting and sounding like a pig. But it was getting darker and colder by the minute and the rest of the companies were allowed to continue to chow.
Is there any possible good, other than a good laugh we can get from this story? Well, I've always said that the reason we can't get the world to want to be like Christians is because the Christians look too much like the world. I am convinced that if the world could see a difference in us they would be more inclined to want to BE like us. Are you looking like the Christian you claim to be?
If you look like the world and act like the world and sound like the world, then like Mr. Pig you may be really late or even miss The Supper.
No comments:
Post a Comment