The son has been heard from

He got a pass and came up to see some friends and pick up some stuff. Spent about two hours talking, mostly about things that've happened in AIT. Among other things:

Good manners dictate that when somone gets Saran-wrapped into their bunk(while drunk, of course) you will, before you turn it on its side, wrap some around the other bunk so that guy won't have to redo it.

When somebody decides to be a smartass and pisses off a DI, causing everybody to have their pass cancelled, there will be payback.

The flat statement that if he goes to the sandbox area, he will not depend on the issue 9mm sidearm. Among other things, a sergeant telling about having been assigned to dignitary protection duty and having a Secret Service agent demonstrate that an attacker can a: drive the slide back and b: actually rip the slide off the weapon. Yes, the Service took care of the paperwork. And yes, I told him that when the time comes, we WILL get hold of a .45 for him.

Aside from the PT, he tells me it's actually pretty easy. I think he's full of crap; for one thing the little bastard is almost scary smart in some ways, and he expected it to be so bloody nasty that anything less he considers 'easy'. One thing he said: he thinks that the only reason some people have a real problem is they have no self-discipline, and (very important) don't know how to shut up.

He looks good. He's doing well in the training, he's looking forward to the future and, PT or no, he no longer looks like Boris Karloff after a bad day at the morgue. Right now he's off to a movie with some friends(much more attractive than time with parents) and hopefully I'll see him tomorrow before he reports back.


Apparently those times of threatening his life as he grew actually did some good. At one point I told him that if he didn't knock it off I was going to kick his skinny ass up between his shoulder blades, shake it back down to proper position, and repeat until he got the idea. Meant it, too; after that maybe being yelled at by a DI isn't so bad.