Hail to the Chief!

Today, ODS really started. And I thought being woken up by someone yelling in the hallway outside my door was unpleasant. That was downright peaceful compared to what happened this morning. Sometime between the hours of 3 and 4 AM, I was abruptly shaken from my slumber by what I thought may have been artillery fire. This loud, booming, shaking was accompanied by shouting which can only be described as guttural. I was out of bed, but still mostly asleep, and completely disoriented. It took me what felt like forever to slip my shorts on and find my arm-band. I felt this sense of panic rise up inside of me that was both uncomfortable and unfamiliar. After taking a few deep breaths in a fruitless attempt to calm myself, I was about to get outside and stand in the hall with the other members of my company, when I thought a bomb went off outside my room, followed by bellowing, "If you're not outside this door in 30 seconds, you will regret it for the rest of your life." Now, I don't know about you, but this definitely did not increase my motivation to leave the room. As I slowly opened the door, I noticed what must have been my mistaken bomb, a distinct shoe scuff that had been applied with a well-timed kick to get us out in the hallway. The only reason I identified this mark so quickly is because I soon witnessed this tactic in use on another member of my company's door. Soon, we were all standing outside at the position of attention, listening to this man bark commands at us. I took this opportunity to slowly scan the hallway, and observed that everyone looked as disheveled as I felt. The poor guy across from me even had his shorts on backwards. As I was slowly coming to, I started to actually listen to the man bellowing at us. Found out he was a Navy Chief and would be in charge of our sorry states for the next 5 weeks. At this time, I actually was able to relax and see the humor in this situation. I mean, when you look at it, here's this funny looking dude, marching up and down screaming his head of at nothing in particular, and he expects us to call him "chief". Up until this point in my life, on the rare occasion that I had referred to someone as "chief", it had not been a term of endearment. So, the use of "chief" for this guy making an ass of himself in an attempt to intimidate, seemed very appropriate. I even got to the point that I had to hold back laughter at this entire ridiculous situation. Here I was, standing outside my hallway in Navy PT clothes, watching this funny man pace back and forth yelling orders at us. In a sense, I felt like I was in 7th grade gym class again. Luckily, I did manage to hold in my laughter, someone a company mate of mine did not quite do. In what seemed like 15 milliseconds, chief was in his face screaming, "IS THERE SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT THIS?" To which he replied, "NO, SIR!" Uh-oh. This was NOT the right thing to say. Apparently, an officer is to be referred to at "Sir/Ma'am", but saying this to a chief is almost considered derogatory. The correct reply was , "NO, CHIEF!" But, he didn't give this response. The volume of chief's voice went up 10-fold and the saliva started to fly when he started, "SIR???? I AM NOT A SIR!!!! I WORK FOR A LIVING!!! NEVER CALL ME SIR!!!! YOU WILL REFER TO ME AS CHIEF!!! YES, CHIEF; OR AYE, AYE, CHIEF; BUT NEVER SIR!!!!" Now, to someone new to the military, it was a bit difficult to tell who was an officer and who was a chief, but making this split second decision became a crucial one for each of us to make. Chief would drop up on our face quicker than you can say, "YES, CHIEF!" and have us doing push-ups until we wanted to cry. If we really pissed him off, we would head to the infamous sand pit. This looked like a beach volleyball court, but without the nets and girls in bikinis. And, the sand seemed to be specially formulated for jaggedness, as kneeling in the stuff would slice up your knees quickly. Trips to the sand pit were threatened often, but luckily rarely carried through. After a morning with chief, we collectively got our sh*t together and did pretty well to stay out of trouble for the rest of our time there. We had seen what chief could become that first morning, and during a particularly memorable trip to the sand pit, and wanted to avoid this at all costs. Turns out, he was a pretty cool guy when you caught him during off hours or later off base when we were finally allowed some liberty, but don't mess with him while you're supposed to be doing military things, or watch out! As time went on, our quality of life slowly improved. We still had to march everywhere, carrying our ridiculous water bottles, and attend hours and hours of terribly boring powerpoint lectures, but evenings and weekends we were given our cell phones back and at times even allowed to go off base and get a decent meal. Aside from push-ups when we got in trouble, we did very little organized PT, which was very disappointing. I was hoping to have ample chance to work-out as a group and use this time to get in better shape. This did not happen, though due to the quality of food, I still lost 15 lbs while I was there. For the most part, I think the important information could have been passed on in about a weeks time, not the 5 weeks that we had to endure. I made some wonderful friends, but was happy to get out of there upon graduation, 5-long weeks later.