I took this picture of our grandson, Isaiah, ten or eleven years ago when he presented himself to me in our kitchen, wearing his skivvies on his head, proclaiming himself Captain Underpants.
Today is his first day at boot camp in the U.S. Navy as Seaman Recruit Isaiah Daniel King.
We got to talk with him on the phone yesterday before he took his oath to tell him we love him and are proud of him. He said he wasn’t nervous but I don’t believe it. When I was 19, as he nearly is, I was scared to death going to Air Force basic training but I didn’t tell him that. I told him some funny stories about my days in basic and he enjoyed them. “You’ll work very hard and be very tired but before you graduate,” I said, “you will be proud of the man you’re becoming.”
He told his Nana he was excited because they told him he’ll get paid his first day in the Navy. When she told me that later I laughed my ass off.
“Yeah, they’ll pay him,” I explained. “Then they’ll march him to the base barber and he’ll have to pay to have his head shaved. After that they’ll march him to the base exchange and give him a long list of personal items he is required to buy with his new money: toiletries, mostly. No snacks, no toys, just gear. Then they’ll march him into a building where he’ll be ordered to strip down to his underwear, give him new underwear and basic training uniforms for scrubs to carry in his arms as they they send him through a gauntlet of people who will inject both arms multiple times with vaccines to ward off every disease known to man, most of which you’ve never heard of.”
I’ve told these stories as endearing memories I’ve kept for more than fifty years. It won’t be funny to Isaiah tonight but I assured him it will be, eventually.
When Isaiah gets back to his barracks today they’ll call him outside for his first day of torturous physical conditioning. They’ll yell him into the chow hall, yell at him to hurry up eating and yell at him some more before yelling it’s time to go to bed. He’ll fall into his “rack” next to fifty other kids as the lights go out. Some of them will be sniffling and crying as quietly as possible in the dark but he’ll hear them.
The next morning will arrive hours before sunrise with the demon sergeant throwing on the stark overhead barracks lighting and yelling at him to wake up, make his bed and fall out.
I suppose things have changed in 50 years but I hope not too much. This is how the military turns boys into men. They know what they’re doing and they almost always get excellent results.
They’ll work his butt off, shouting at him all the way, for the next eight weeks. He’ll be dog tired all the time, collapsing on the floor to sleep next to his bunk because he doesn’t want to mess up the bed he was ordered to make with crisp hospital corners so tight that a drill instructor can bounce a coin off the top blanket.
But there is fun to be had along the way. In memory, at least, if not at the moment.
I told Isaiah of the time our basic training flight (that’s what they call a group of scrubs in the Air Force) was marching down the street with our drill sergeant screaming in our faces the whole way. Everybody had knit sphincters, not least of all a young man from Metairie, Louisiana, named Dawson. He was a pure Cajun kid who talked funny and couldn’t keep in step with the rest of us. The harder he tried the worse it got and the more he was yelled at. He had one permanently crossed-eye that flicked every which way but the right way as he tried in vain to follow directions. I was marching next to him as the beast with four stripes screamed at him barely inches from his terrified face.
“DAWSON! GET IN STEP! DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FEET, LIFT YOUR HEAD, SHOULDERS BACK, GET IN STEP! EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD, DAWSON! EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD!…BOTH OF THEM!”
When Sergeant Tenorio said “both of them!” six of us collapsed in hysterics. That’s what he was aiming for. He screamed at all of us to get the hell out of his flight and march in shame behind the rest of the group.
Isaiah laughed. That’s what I was aiming for.
He’s a good boy and now he’s becoming a good man.
Here’s my first chapter in the Captain Underpants story, written 11 years ago. It includes the origin of the name.
