EPTI remember walking into my recruiters office when my mom came to visit once. She was always harping on me to figure out what I wanted to do after high school, as I showed no real interest in any career field, and was not really taking my SATs/SAT IIs seriously. I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school, and quite honestly, I didn't care. And then senior year came, and it was crunch time. Like I said above, my mom came to visit about halfway through that year. She was always traveling due to her job, so I was staying with my dad at this point. She threw a bunch of options in my face and I was intimidated by the though of even applying to a college (I don't really take rejection very well). The rest of my class was already gossiping about the various colleges in the area, what was a good idea to go for, and what they planned to do there. Not I.
My mom eventually brought up the military as an idea. At first I laughed it off as yeah, right, this geeky kid who knew nothing other than video games and anime fighting the war?
Well several days later, I wandered into a recruiters office. It was a combined services recruiting station, and I remember vividly that the Air Force's office was in the back, so I had to walk by the Army, Marines and Navy's office and have to resist their zealous efforts to pick me up. I knew straight up I was in no shape to be infantry, and that idea scared me anyways, so that left the Navy or Air Force. As I sat down in the office with my mom, the recruiter was giving me her shpeal on the wonders of the Air Force and all the benefits, blah blah blah. Then she asked me "What do you think?"
Honestly, I was not really paying attention to the thing, so I said the first thing that came to mind.
"Sure, let's do it"
A lot of you are probably like "lol wtf", and honestly, after I got home after signing some paperwork, I was thinking the same thing. What did I just do? It didn't hit me until I went to MEPS (the processing station where they make sure you were able to actually do the basic crap that they make you do). I think it was roughly 3 months after I signed the papers at the recruiters office that I went there.
Oh man, what an experience. I'll try to recount what I can, but that was a while ago, a lot of details are fuzzy. Basically, the recruiter said "Be here at so and so time, I'll take you to the hotel,"
The hotel? Because of the amount of stuff I had to do, and the fact that I had to do it in one day, meant I had to stay overnight to make it there on time. I believe showtime was around 5 or so in the morning, and there would have been no way I'd make it there living as far as I did, in LA traffic. I stayed at some fairly built up hotel that night somewhere in downtown LA. It was decent. When we first got there, my recruiter told me to head to some room or other to check in. They should know what I'm there for. I headed to the room to find it with several people with blank looks on their face. I slowly creeped my way to the back of them and they barely lifted their heads to acknowledge I even walked in. About 30 minutes of dead silence in the room, a hotel worker appeared with some sign in sheet and some room keys for us all. Also informed us what times that food would be available for us.
I stayed with some guy going Army, and he spent a good chunk of time doing pushups and situps while I watched TV. Eventually the dinner they were providing us was available downstairs so we wandered down to pick up some meager scraps of food that was more or less a reminder of the kind of shit we'll be eating in the future. Almost as if it was a warning to stop now, but I ignored it, I was starving.
About 3AM or so, we woke up and got ready to head to the processing station. They provided us breakfast which I can't remember what it consisted of, besides the eggs which reminded me of water. Again, I was hungry, and I was dead tired, I didn't even notice.
They stuffed all of us in a bus and we drove probably 10-15m to the station. I got there and just followed everyone else. They seemed to know where they were going, and I just followed along. While we stacked up against the wall, some conversations started. normal stuff about predictions of that season's sports, movies they've watched recently, small banter. A few minutes later, some woman in uniform barged outside and started going off about talking too loudly. As far as I knew, we weren't even allowed in for another 20m, and I had said nothing the whole time, I just looked the other way while silence again enveloped the crowd.
When we were finally let in, we were introduced to a room with several chairs, a TV with some DVD playing (I think it was Doom), a metal detector, and a closet to stuff our bags and junk in. We were told to line up, all the while, I could feel eyes in every direction suddenly were on us. After all, I guess if they worked there, we were all they had to care about. We were lead into a room with more chairs, a TV with a DVD playing (Without a Paddle, I think) and rooms with each branch of service's insignia on it. I sat down and watched the menu screen to Without a Paddle for about an hour. What joy.
I was eventually called into the office for the Air Force. Myself and several other people (I can only assume they were going Air Force as well), were given instructions as to where to go. What made this interesting was the demeanor of the Airmen there. They were all Sergeants, sure, but they were laughing and joking with us. It wasn't until we began our trek around MEPS that the air of caution that we had developed surrounded us again.
I don't actually remember the path or order that I went to the various areas in MEPS. I think that we were simply told, go do this list of crap, this is here, this is here, this is here, etc, come back here when you're done.
So we did. As I said before, I don't remember the order I went to stuff, but there were issues everywhere I went. Here's the stuff I do remember doing.
1. The piss test.
I remembered this right off the bat. If you have never taken a piss test, feel lucky for yourself, it's a very awkward experience. I still have to take them at varying intervals to this day, so I'm more or less used to it now, but damn it was weird as shit. And it wasn't the weirdest shit that I even did that day.
The basic premise is, well, piss in a bottle with your name on it. If you needed to pee right then and there, you were given priority, otherwise, you kinda sat outside and drank water until you were ready to go. When you were ready, you informed a very disgruntled looking person, who called over an even more disgruntled looking person. They would escort you to the bathroom. You had to sign some paper and they would give you a bottle with your name and some identifying information on it. You take the bottle and hold it over your head while this guy follows you there. When you get into the bathroom, it gets weird.
This guy's job is to watch you piss into the bottle. I later asked some other escorts when I finally got into the military, what that's actually like. Apparently you have to take a class, and to quote him "It has to leave the head of the penis, and be one continuous stream until it reaches an acceptable amount of piss in the bottle, in which time, you can break form the bottle and pee normally into the urinal". And there were 3-4 other people doing it with me. Stage fright is not uncommon, and it's not uncommon to get yelled at for wasting their time staring at a dick that isn't peeing, then having to do it again later.
You take the bottle, and wipe it off. I dared not look at my escort, I figured it would only make things weirder. I cleaned the bottle off with some towels, washed my hands, and handed it back to the guy who gave me the bottle. He grunted and I was done there. Sheesh.
2. The blood test.
I remember when I saw the line for the shot, it was fairly short so I jumped at the opportunity. I wasn't really expecting much. It wasn't until the guy I saw walking out was pale, and the bandage covered his elbow. I grew slightly worried.
Eventually it was my turn. I walked around to a dentist chair that they had me sit in, while lab coats fluttered to and fro. I sat a few minutes and they gave me a stress ball without saying anything. Eventually some attendant sat down looking bright and chipper.
"How are you doing today?" Damn well if I knew what the hell was gonna happen to me without the guesswork.
"I'm doin' alright"
"That's great, are you right or left handed"
"Right"
So she picks up my right arm and I begin squeezing the stress ball. If you have never given blood before, you might not know, but it may or may not take a bit for them to find an appropriate vein to draw the blood from. Well, it took them a while. What made it worse is I suppose that the attendant was new, and had issues hitting the vein. It starts to get on your nerves when the needle has to come in and out of your body and the previous pokes served NO PURPOSE AT ALL.
Eventually they hit the right vein and they drew a rather silly amount of blood, if I recall. They laughed and joked as my blood pumped into a test tube and all the while, I was squeezing the stress ball while trying not to throw it at the attendant that made my arm look like a damn polka dot design. After an acceptable amount of blood was drawn, I was let to go on my way.
3. The vision/listening test
At one point I was told I needed a vision and hearing test. I kinda laughed inside at the vision test, I'm blind as a bat.
There wasn't anything notable about this, except the depth perception test. It was pretty amusing, because for some reason, I had one eye closed and didn't realize it. I stared into some bino looking things and the lab coat said,
"Tell me what number the dotted line corresponds to,"
"What dotted line?"
"The dotted line that's goes across the image and it lines up with a number"
"I don't see a dotted line, sir"
It took us several minutes of arguing before he left the room in frustration asking for someone to come by and help him out with this retarded idiot (myself). While he was outside, I lifted my head from the machine and realized one eye was closed. I opened my left eye and saw the dotted line.
lol.
4. Lunch
If you have driven around in downtown LA, you might have noticed those trailers that sell food, similar to a hot dog stand in New York, except it's a full blow trailer with a grill in it and more food. And it might sound racist, but they're mostly driven by Mexicans. I wish there was another way to say it, but that's.... really just how it is.
Well one of those rolled up about the time we were told to break for food. There was a cafeteria in the actual station, but the trailer rolled up anyways, because the line got long. Either way, you had to pay, which was a change from the hotel, although the food was way better at MEPS than at the hotel. I ate in the cafeteria, quickly threw my trash away, and headed to the next station.
5. The duck walk
This station was the most packed. It was more or less a physical, but because it allowed the most room, it had the most people heading there. We all sat in a wide open room with a bench against the wall. Soon some lab coat came in and told us all to strip down to our boxers. Some of us looked around at each other, but others did it on the spot. So we complied. We all stood up, lined up shoulder to shoulder and he told us to do various exercises to make sure we could actually do it.
The most interesting was the duck walk. Basically you crouch and with your feet flat on the floor, walk forward in the crouching position with your heel touching the ground first. It sounds easy, but you have to remember that you're shoulder to shoulder with some other half naked guys and we're all bumping into each other. So I was the dumbass that fell over because the guy next to me bumped into me when the guy pointed me out.
"HEY. YOU. YEAH, SKINNY, GET BACK THERE AND DO IT AGAIN"
I complied, he looked at me funny, and we continued on.
After we were done doing our half naked PT (Physical training) session, they took our weight and height. We put our clothes on, and they lined us up on the wall and called us into an office one by one. I was somewhere in the middle, but I heard weird sounds coming from there, along the lines of gasping. I grew nervous.
My turn came and I sat in a chair while a guy asks me some questions about my health. It wasn't anything weird, until he told me to stand up and take my pants down. Here's where shit got weird. I pulled my pants down and he said my underwear too. I looked at him funny.
"Boy, you think I like this part of my job? I have more balls to feel after yours so I would appreciate if you would pull your damn underwear down, I could feel your damn balls and we could get over this awkward shit".
I complied. And he grabbed my balls.
"Turn your head and cough"
I complied.
"Put your damn shit back on"
I complied.
"Get the hell out of here"
I definitely complied.
6. The fingerprint
Everything else after the duck walk was more or less a blur. Most of it was administrative paperwork and stuff, except the fingerprint. I was pulled aside after I finished signing some stuff and was told I needed to give my fingerprint. The guy told me to shut up, just relax control of my hand and he would deal with it. So I did.
He put my hand onto some computer, and it began to scan. It kept coming up as a negative read.
"Are you controlling your hand?"
"No sir"
"So why does it keep coming up as a negative read, I do this all the time, there should be nothing wrong"
"Sir, it says scan the right hand. You're holding my left hand"
"...."
So yeah.
7. Heading back home.
I signed some more stuff and headed back to the Air Force office. There they told me that it was some tradition or other to be able to lift some weight above your head to signify that you were ready to be better than I am now. They lead me to some weight machine that I didn't notice when I first got here. I wasn't able to lift it until the guy lifted it for me. I didn't dare look behind me, because I was in a room full of gym rats, and they were probably all thinking the same thing watching some scrawny little Asian kid struggle at 100 pounds.
After about an hour of mind numbing boredom, and watching more of the menu screen for Without a Paddle, I eventually was released to my recruiter who had come to pick me up. She asked me what I thought about it, and I looked at her funny. She said yeah, that's how most people feel about it. Wait until you come back here before you head back out to Basic.
Oh great. I have to come back.
I suppose. From what you say would you rather have not done it?
