The First Time For Just About Everything

>>>>Edited to add a second photo at the end of the post.<<<<

Professor posted a meme over the weekend at Babble From Babbler, nudging her readers to reveal the many firsts in their lives. Now, for quite a while I had been batting around the idea to relate in my blog the first time I ever flew on a plane, seeing as how it's such a huge part of my life today, but when I think back to that day I remember so clearly, I'm drawn to the reason why I remember it so clearly. It was such a momentous day in my young life, filled with so many touches of comedy, that I can't brush the whole day away just to relate my first airplane ride!

I was nineteen years and three months old on December 7, 1983. Ten months earlier I had signed my name on several dotted lines and faced the biggest commitment I had ever faced, and the biggest I would face until my marriage — Uncle Sam had wooed me with promises to show me the world and to ease my financial burden through college, and I had accepted, as much for those reasons as it was an exciting way to get out of the crazy house where I had grown up and grown restless.

With my decision, I redefined the "bookends" tag my oldest brother and I had. He was the oldest sibling, I was the youngest — both boys. And now I was following in his footsteps into the Air Force 17 years later where none of our other siblings had. I didn't choose the Air Force because that's where my big brother went. No, I chose the Air Force because my big brother talked me out of joining the Army! In my case there was no angst surrounding my decision, as it was peacetime. My big brother joined up in 1968, right in the thick of the Vietnam War. I can't imagine the turns my mother's stomach made when he made that announcement! But having volunteered, he was able to choose his career field, and he chose wisely: he didn't go to Vietnam. Hell! He never even went overseas in his 21-year career!

My family threw a party. It wasn't a huge blowout, just all the siblings — except my big brother, who called that evening to wish me well — and a few of my aunts and uncles. I finally received the Sony Walkman I had wanted for about a year or so, which I later used (and still use!) as fodder for the joke that my family "gave it to me as a going away present. They said, 'We'll give you a Walkman if you'll go away!'"

Aside from the growing feeling of tremendous apprehension, the other noteworthy memory from that evening was when Uncle Chooch — who has dealt with a stutter all his life — reached out to shake my hand. I felt him press something into my palm as he pulled my ear close to his mouth and whispered, "G-Get a b-b-blowjob!"

Accustomed to this sort of comment from Uncle Chooch, I calmly looked at the ten-dollar bill in my hand, looked up at Chooch and said loudly, "That's all it costs?!" Few people in the room — namely my sisters — caught on, but Chooch was mortified until he realized again that he was Chooch, and Chooch often said that sort of thing.

Much of the night is a blur. Mom and/or Dad took me to the train station late that evening. Mom used her monthly commuter ticket to let me pass through the turnstile, and I rode the IC (Illinois Central) Electric Line up to downtown Chicago. Off the train at the Randolph Street station, I climbed the stairs to Michigan Avenue and walked alone for several blocks south to the Americana Congress hotel. I had done the same thing in February, when I went for the initial physical at the Military Enlistment Processing Station, or MEPS. The only difference now was that, unless the doctors found something terribly wrong in my physical condition, I wasn't going back home the next afternoon…or any time soon! Along the whole walk to the hotel, I had no offers for a ten-dollar blowjob.

My biggest immediate fear was that I would oversleep and be late for my first military assignment, which was Show Up On Time. I barely slept that night as I tried to imagine how The Rest Of My Life would be from that point forward.

The next morning, after a horrid breakfast, which was the strongest cause yet for serious doubt about my choice of future, I found myself walking in a gaggle of other young people toward the MEPS. Again, much of the day is a blur. I do remember that the doctors and the processing folks weren't as stern as I had expected them to be. They were as stern as they had to be in order to get several dozen young men and women through all the examinations they needed in that one brief day.

It seemed absurd: here we were, these gangly young men (we had been separated from the women almost from the moment we stepped into the clinic), all roughly the same age, all stripped to our underwear and walking in single file from one examination station to the next. At one point we were herded into a more private room where stood two men and one middle-aged Asian woman, all in medical scrubs and white coats. One of the men barked, "Turn around, face the wall, drop your shorts…"

Mildly panicked, I looked over at the Asian woman to make sure I had correctly assessed the gender. She was a woman, all right. WHY IS SHE IN HERE? I worried. Why are they subjecting her to this embarrassment?

The barking man finished barking: "…bend over and spread your cheeks!" This is one of life's absurd moments, where dozens of thoughts and images come rushing at you at once. I first stifled a laugh as the memory came to me of my best friend, Lu, who had processed into the Marine Corps one year earlier, and related to me his own MEPS experiences, and who had created laughs in this very same moment when, upon the order to "bend over and spread your cheeks," he bent over and grabbed his face and pulled the flesh there in opposing directions — on purpose. The guys on either side of him had cracked up, and they all got yelled at. Though choking back the laugh, I didn't have the balls to repeat Lu's actions.

The next thought that occurred to me was What must this look like? Did the doctors — or whatever those people behind us were — ever imagine in their wildest dreams that they'd be there in that room at that moment looking at a bunch of assholes?

Next thought: What could they possibly be looking for?

Next thought: Cripes! That poor woman! And where the hell is she? Whose ass is she looking at? MINE?

And then I felt fingers touch my butt cheek, way off to one side and, thankfully, up kinda high. "Okay, stand up," said the other man's voice quietly to me. Very soon we were ordered to pull up our shorts and file through the next door.

I am not a needle-phobe. I can withstand the thought of getting a shot or having blood taken with only a little bit of profuse sweating and brief threats of nausea. I am not a needle-phobe; I am a needle wimp. That's why, when we were told the next station was for blood samples, I squirmed my way to the back of the line. When you are facing the agony of confronting one of your least favorite things to do, any wait seems interminable. And so did mine. Finally I approached the phlebotomist. I was the absolute last person to be poked. She stuck me, drained what seemed an egregious amount of blood (or time, rather!) into the vial, placed a cotton ball over the catheter and removed it from my vein. She said, "Put your finger on this [the cotton ball], bend your arm and don't remove it until you're told."

She sent me into the next room where all the other guys were sitting, each with one arm bent and one finger from their other hand holding a cotton ball over the little hole made by the phlebotomists' catheters. There was one chair left to sit in. I stood in front of it, bent my knees and, no sooner had my ass had hit the chair than one of the barkier technicians came in and barked, "Stand up, file out this door and drop your cotton balls in this trash can on your way out!"

I did as I was told and stepped through the door, where we filed into another hallway and stood against a wall to wait to go into the next station. One of my fellow recruits looked at me and said, "Hey, man," and pointed at my arm.

I looked down to find a long stream of blood trickling down from the tiny needle hole in the crook of my arm and curling around my forearm, and threatening to drip on the floor. The barky tech stood near one of the other techs waiting for the next room to clear. I stepped out of the line and approached him. "Excuse me. Sir?"

"You got a problem, son?" he bellowed. I don't think he was used to people getting out of his line.

I presented my blood-streaked arm and looked down. "I'm not done bleeding."

"Oh, jeez," he griped. "Come on."

I followed him back into the blood-test after-poke waiting room. He got me a cotton ball and told me to put it on my hole, and to come through with the next group.

Later in the day we were filed into the hearing test. Six or eight at a time, we were placed in a soundproof booth and told to put on a pair of headphones. Then we were told to pick up the alarm button in front of us at each listening station. We were instructed to listen for the sound of aural tones in our headphones. As soon as we heard a tone, we were to press the button and hold it until the tone stopped. Simple enough.

I parked at a station, put on the headphones and grabbed the handle at the end of the cord with my thumb poised over the button. At the first tone I pressed the button and held it. The tone grew louder and louder right up to the point where it was almost painful to my ears. And then it stopped. I released the button. This went on for about five minutes, and I was getting a headache!

Finally the technician came into the booth, walked right up to me and shouted, "CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

I must have given her quite the look. "I can hear you fine!"

With quite a bit of agitation, she grabbed my alarm button to demonstrate, and shouted, "When you hear the tone, you push the button! You hold the button until you hear the tone go away! THEN you release the button!"

"Yeah, that's what I did! It just kept getting louder."

She looked at the button. She looked at me with that "It can't be my equipment that's faulty" look. Then she said, "Go out there and get in with the last group. You have to take the test again.

When I returned to the booth for my test, she told everyone not to use the station I had used. The test commenced, and this time when I heard the tone and pressed the button, the tone faded away until it was gone, and I released the button. Afterward the tech came out and told me I had the best score of the day! She was actually quite nice. I was so glad I hadn't asked her for a ten-dollar blowjob when she was being pissy.

The end of the day was all paperwork and then we had to sit and wait until our ride arrived to take us to the airport. It was during this time of the day that I first heard the term "hurry up and wait." It would define the entire bulk of my brief Air Force career.

After what seemed like forever, we were transported to the airport where we were simply travelers. We were booked on a Delta Airlines flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and from there on another plane to San Antonio.

This wasn't the first time I had flown. My friend Sam's father was a one-fourth owner of a Cessna single propeller engine, four-seater plane, and had his pilot's license. One day he asked me if I wanted to go for a fly. He took Sam and me up, allowing me to fly briefly, showing me how to operate the rudder and the ailerons together in order to execute a turn. It was fun, but it was very brief.

It was the first time I had flown commercially. As I and my fellow Air Force recruits boarded the Delta Airlines plane, I was pretty excited. At day's end I found myself with people who not only had the same service entry date, but who were headed to the same place I was.

I like to believe I'm a pretty funny guy. I usually try to make people around me laugh, and sometimes I succeed. There are times, however, when I hit a groove and I can't miss. On the plane to Dallas, in the minutes before takeoff, while the plane was still boarding, I was hitting home run after home run. I had my peers rolling, as they were spread around me. I even had some of the "normal" passengers going. I can't for the life of me remember most of what I said. All I know is that my excitement was at a fever pitch. I was trembling and sweating, but energized, and every funny thought that came to my head translated into funny words.

The only thing I remember saying was when the plane had taxied to the runway. We sat there for a few seconds, and then the pilot locked the brakes and revved the engines for take-off. The whole body of the plane rocked as if in eager anticipation of flexing its muscles and hurtling us down the runway. The roar of the engines got louder and more insistent as the brakes held us fast. Then, really loudly, I said, "He's gonna pop the clutch!" All the people in the seats around me — recruits and "normal" travelers alike — erupted in laughter!

All of that came to a screeching halt when we got to San Antonio, where the real consequence of signing our names on those dotted lines waited for us.

As I travel now, I often see young people in groups with manila envelopes in hand, staying together in a cluster. I know from my own experience that these young people are retracing my very own footsteps of two decades ago. It always strikes me that these kids all seem to know each other really well. It took this reminiscence for me to see it clearly: friends are made quickly in such a situation. At MEPS — or whatever it's called today — young men and women headed for all the branches of service are huddled together for their exams, but go their separate ways to their respective services when that first day is done. Those headed to the same branch of service, to the same basic training schools, are together embarking on an adventure from the same starting point. They are sharing an identical experience, but through wildly divergent perceptions, and they come quickly to rely upon each other for reassurance and leadership in a shared, frightening, exciting new experience. Little do they know that, once they get to their destination, they may never speak to each other or see each other again for the rest of their lives, even though in those first few weeks they're sometimes in as close proximity as a few yards from each other.

And then I see it in my memory: the fast, close friendships we formed from the hurry-up-and-wait of MEPS to the what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into of the first few hours of basic training. I still remember some of their names: Brendan Ryan, Dan Colwell, a young black guy named McFadden (I think), and a girl named Tanya. All the guys were in my same basic training flight, and throughout that class there was a tighter bond between us than we had with any of the other guys from all over the country. Tanya wound up stationed at the same base I was — Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana. We went on a date there, saw Ghostbusters and no sparks flew. With a few exceptions in passing, we never saw each other again.

There were a lot of firsts in that my first day as a member of the United States armed services. It is often said that you always remember your first time.

So true.