by Mike Strickland
The first challenge I faced in boot camp was not what I expected. Physical demands, psychological pressure, and personal growth would all be part of the experience. But who knew it would all begin with a biological trial?
Though my hometown of San Diego hosted one of the Navy’s three boot camps, the recruit depot saw fit to send me halfway across the country for basic training: Great Lakes Recruit Training Center, a half-hour north of Chicago, just in time for winter. I joined a busload of other nervous young men traveling from O’Hare to Great Lakes, visions of every Hollywood version of boot camp swirling through my mind. The reality proved far less dramatic. After a couple hours of paperwork and other “hurry up and wait” exercises, we sat in a large conference room while our new company commander barked at us. But before we became his children for eight weeks, we had one final task. And it involved a little plastic cup.
The Navy’s zero-tolerance policy with regard to drugs meant regular, random urine tests throughout one’s active duty service. Generally, a roll of a 10-sided die determined the lucky winners; anyone whose Social Security number ended in that number had to report to the Master- At-Arms by the end of the day and donate a specimen. For us fresh recruits, all 10 numbers came up. We’d all been exhaustively prescreened before even leaving our hometowns, but we had one final hoop to jump through, in case any of us had gone a little too far overboard at our going-away parties.
I assume that you, dear reader, have had to pee in a cup at one point or another, whether for medical or pre-employment reasons. A nurse probably gave you a plastic cup and sent you off to the privacy of a bathroom. We quickly learned that privacy is a civilian luxury. Lest some dishonest recruit surreptitiously taint his urine in an effort to foil the drug test, some lucky sailor got to watch each and every one of us as we unzipped our flies and did our business right in front of him.
As might be expected, a handful of us, me included, experienced performance anxiety. The stress of the day had caught up to me, and the indignity of the situation shocked my naïve sensibilities. Plus, from a practical standpoint, the tank was pretty empty. Fortunately, the sailors took pity on us and gave us some time to work ourselves up to it. I quickly downed six glasses of water and returned to the conference room.
As the company commander and other staff members alternately yelled and droned on, I felt an increasing pressure build in my lower abdomen. I looked around, wondering when I’d get my second chance to provide a sample. An officer blathered on about formations and general orders. As we watched a mind-numbingly boring training video about life aboard ship, the pressure mounted. I squirmed in my seat, trying to minimize the pain. Forget the plastic cup and lack of privacy; at this point, I could fill a bucket while a convent full of nuns looked on.
Just as I was about to raise my hand and open myself up to ridicule, the company commander blessedly announced that those of us still waiting to pee could try again. I stepped right up and got to work. As the Master-At-Arms watched, I filled the cup to the brim, confident I could have won an Academy Award if there had been a category for Best Performance by a Recruit in a Urination Role.
It didn’t take me long to lock away my dignity at the bottom of my sea bag. Survival in the Navy required a thick skin. The episode with the plastic cup on my very first evening as a seaman recruit prepared me for other, even more undignified episodes to come: being showered by JP-5 gas turbine fuel during underway replenishment; cleaning shower drains used by sailors who had missed the comfort of female companionship for far too long; and having my bunk splattered by vomit after a shipmate had enjoyed a liberty stop a little too vigorously.
As advertised, it wasn’t just a job, it was an adventure.
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Mike Strickland is an award-winning speculative fiction author whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in the bestselling anthology Writers of the Future (Vol. 42), Cast of Wonders, Amazing Stories, Cosmic Daffodil, and elsewhere. He lives in Colorado, where he recently earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Western Colorado University. If you enjoyed this story, let him know at www.strick.land.
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