Late late late for a not-so-important date

Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, 8:25 a.m.

Since, when I showed up for first formation this morning at 6:30, none of my sergeants (or, indeed, any of my fellow peons) were there, I ducked out early and decided to come home and write some semblance of a diary entry -- at least, whatever I can get written before 8 a.m., when I really should start getting ready for work. I would wait til 8:15 or 8:25, except that I've noticed, due to the heavy traffic that builds up outside the gate of Fort Stewpid as 9 a.m. nears, that there is about a ten-minute window during which I can leave my house and arrive at work five minutes early. If I leave even thirty seconds after that wondow has closed, traffic will be backed up nearly to the edge of town, and I will end up flying through the doors, breathless and befrizzed, nearly twenty minutes late. That, my friend, is a direct ticket to a place we call, in these parts, Corrective Training Hell.

Corrective Training is a sort of punishment-fits-the-crime way of dealing with soldiers who are (and this is the technical term, here) shitbags. It's also used for one-time discrepancies, but for the most part, if you are receiving corrective training, you are either actively trying to piss somebody off, or somebody (maybe that same somebody) is a power-tripping maniac who can't, nay, won't, understand that humans are not perfect.

Oh, okay, I suppose I'll tell you exactly how I know that.

About two or three weeks ago, one of my sergeants (I don't know if I already gave him some kind of nickname, but in case I didn't, let's call him Sergeant Insane-o) decreed that from now on, we must all report to our battalion's 6:30 a.m. formation at 6:20. I'm not sure exactly why, but I'm guessing it's so he can either make sure he has enough time to make an accurate head count of the three of us, or because he is an overachieving prick who likes to constantly remind us that we have to do what he says. Whichever.

A few days later, as I walked up to our formation, he looked at me, pointed to his watch and said, "It's 6:22."

I replied, "Oh, I'm sorry; I was sitting in my car to keep warm until it was time to come outside to formation, and my clock must be off by a couple minutes. It won't happen again."

He responded quite graciously, "Obviously you didn't understand my instructions verbally; I'm going to have to put them in writing."

"Well sure, sergeant. Obviously, the fact that I was two minutes late is a glaring indication that I am willfully trying to undermine your authority, disregard your instructions and communicate my intense desire to hurl you into the path of any object moving fast enough to cause permanent damage to your ego."

That's what he heard, in his mind. In actuality, what I said was this:

" ... "

NOTHING. For ONCE. You can applaud.

Of course, it didn't make a damn bit of difference, because later that day he called me into his office and handed me a sheet of paper.

"I'm giving you this counseling statement," he said, "because you were two minutes late for formation, and because I am the worst kind of leader you will ever come across." (That last part is a teensy bit embellished, actually.)

Granted, I had been late a couple of times before, but not any later than five minutes, and not within the past month.

He continued, "This is your Corrective Training: Starting at the beginning of next week and continuing for ten days, you will report to formation at 6:15. Then, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., you will report to me in my office every hour, on the hour. If one or both of us, for some reason, are not in the office, you will call me on my cell phone and leave me a message, which will be time-stamped. ON NON-DUTY DAYS, you will call me at 12 and 6 p.m. to check in. Then maybe you will develop more of a sense of urgency."

I was speechless again. For a minute.

"Isn't that a little excessive, sergeant?" I asked him. "I mean, I was two minutes late because of a clock discrepancy. It's not like I just showed up twenty minutes late, half-naked and waving a banner that says 'Go to Hell, The Rules!" (Again, that last part was not, necessarily, spoken aloud. My bad.)

"Stop making excuses," he said. "Sign this, and if you have anything else to say, write it in the 'additional remarks' section."

So I signed it, and wrote my thoughts in the designated area. When he read what I wrote, he threw a tiny shit fit (I had dared to disrespect him by placing the word "urgency" in quotes), but then that was it. I was free to go, and enjoy the prospect of being treated like a disobedient child for the next week and a half. Four more days of it to go. Gosh, I love the Army.

Speaking of me loving the Army, guess what! Apparently our division has been put on a stop-movement order, effective this week! Hooray! Now I don't get to leave! In fact, I might, if I'm SUPER-LUCKY, get to deploy again this summer! Won't that be GREAT?!

In other news, I'm going to be needing serious psychiatric help here in the very near future, because this is almost too much for my brain to wrap itself around. Isn't it nice when your life's major decisions are taken completely out of your hands?

Fuck. I have to leave NOW, or I will be certainly late. I have a bunch of new photos on my Flickr site detailing the insanity that was this weekend, if you care to peruse them while pretending to be hard at work.

Aaaaand I'm out the door.