Basic Training

My first dream of the year….and I don’t know if I should be concerned with the premise of such a dream like this or intrigued. With the way things seem to be going, I don’t think such a thing would be unlikely. I was waiting in this long queue of a bunch of young people. Mainly 18 year old – late 20 year old guys and girls. We’re all wearing fatigues. These dreaded multi-cam pants and a beige undershirt. We are lined up in this massive gym where people are getting drilled to do push ups, swim at a swimming pool, or train with M16A4 rifles (Because apparently the military was too cheap to give recruits M4s or whatever that new ((SIG)) rifle that just recently got rejected after being accepted because lmao SIG isn’t the same quality gun maker that people remember and might as well be the GM of firearms manufacturing. That should be blogpost for another day but look up SIG quality control if you want to go down that firearm rabbit hole. The point is, I think we all know what’s going on here. WW3 probably just kicked off and a bunch of people (and I do mean a bunch of people including myself) ended up getting drafted and forced into PT. Thankfully it’s not outside because I would be dead and it seems to be fairly cool in this giant gymnasium.

As we wait in line, there’s some other recruits going through us one by one as we give out details about our name, age, and other boring information. Just waiting in line here is incredibly boring and the recruits in line with me are joking around about something I don’t understand. Nobody seems to be in bad spirits which is odd. I would be upset if someone tried to force me into a war I wasn’t interested in. But in this dream, I apparently didn’t put up a fight. We were all lined up at the center of the gym, given about an equal amount of space between each person. The drill instructor finally introduced himself in the most anti-climatic and monotone way you can think of. I thought D.I.s were supposed be like...uh...screaming at giving commands and kicking you to the floor, but it really felt like they were just going through the motions. I guess it makes sense considering how many recruits there were in this gym getting training. We were instructed to stand at attention first, then we were given the order to do like 10 push ups. This feels too much like gym class and I don’t really feel like this is training. Then there the sit-ups, and the crouches, stretches. Scratch that, this feels more like a Yoga class. We weren’t even expected to say “Yes Drill Sgt.” or anything like that. As expected, everyone did what they were told to do and nothing really happened after that other than the D.I. telling us that we can move on the armory where we’ll be receiving our rifles for further instructions.

Once again, we were waiting in line. More waiting. And waiting. I look around and see the pool area where there are some recruits swimming back and forth like it was some kind of practice for the swim team in high school, and other area of the gym where the recruits are practicing shouldering their rifles. It’s quite noisy in here, but it’s about as noisy as you would expect a packed gym full of people doing physically activities would be, which is not necessarily ear bleeding but you can’t really hear someone if they aren’t talking loud and clear enough. Once it was my turn to go the armory. The armory itself was like something like a fast food check out thing. There was a glass enclosure office with lockers behind a counter and a bunch of recruits working this area would go back and forth between lockers with numerical labels as they would fetch an M16A4 rifle with no magazine in the magwell and give it the clerk who would then slide the rifle under the glass enclosure. The clerk working at this counter was a girl with a tied bun on her head, also wearing fatigues like the rest of us. She smiles and asks me how I’ve been doing. It’s a very casual question I wasn’t expecting.

”Not great but not terrible either.” I sort of tell her in this manner.

”Aw don’t worry about it. PT isn’t all that bad. I’m sure you’ll feel better once you get the hang of things. Can you tell me your name and company number?”

I give her my details as she instructs one of the other recruits in the office to fetch a rifle from the lockers behind her. I get my rifle handled to me. It has some numbers written in white paint on the A2 style stock that matches the number on the locker and on this girl’s paper tablet. “Here you go, you’re all set. Take care now you hear me.” This girl seems nice. She’s not exactly pretty but I wouldn’t mind getting to know here on my off time assuming they would let us have that.

So I take my rifle and hold it by the carry handle sights. I heard this sort of carry method was considered a big no no in PT but nobody tells me anything. I am familiar with the operation of this rifle and the AR I have at home is sort of similar to this format and I always like carrying my rifle with the carry handle sights. I stand at parade rest at one side of the gym along with other recruits who got issued rifles. There doesn’t seem to be discipline here at all as some recruits start to play around with their rifles and point it recklessly all over. I know they don’t have magazines but firearm safety rules don’t go away if your firearm isn’t loaded. It’s better safe than sorry and honestly it’s shocking that this sort of recklessness is even tolerated with this whole massive recruit training thing going on here.

And that’s all that really occurs in this dream as I wake up right around this point and am relieved to be in my room again. I seriously hope this isn’t some sort of glimpse into my future because I refuse to partake in any kind of draft. Especially considering I am sort of crippled on my left arm from my car accident years ago and I have a heat intolerance allergy that makes it impossible to be outside in anything hotter than 80F.