Another day starts with highway driving. We're groggy and passing around the usual assinine conversations when some pop song starts raging on the radio "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" (repeat 30 times). We're oblivious to its origin and it may be as over played as any radio song you're vomiting at currently but it's new to us. It starts quiet but we all start singing, and within a few seconds a booming chorus of "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" comes wailing from our mouths. I'm not sure if it's our individual attempts to sound like fools or if we're screaming in defiance of everything here. It hits me that I've been activated for over a year at this point.
I'm realizing I never went into detail about what happened around that time. It was a strange turning point for me, I had just moved home from Florida after a stint of three years working towards a technical degree and doing a bit of job exploring. Overall I probably considered that whole experience an overall failure for reasons that would not be apparent to others, and I'd rather not elaborate on further. It was a turning point though, like I said, and worth the lessons gained but it was surely lacking in what I had had in mind for my stay there.
In any event I was home and trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next. Many days of a month were shot before I realized I was wasting my time with unrewarding meandering. Schooling in something that I care about and at a place where I've felt at home was my cure. And so I sent out my application and waited through another week of pandering interest until the packet I coveted came and proclaimed I could return.
I was on the phone scoping out possible apartments when the mail came. Setting dates for tours, fantasizing about new living spaces, it was all exciting and hopeful. Then I trotted downstairs and there was a packet two inches deep bearing the army's name and insignia. I felt like I'd been stuck by needles and my stomach sank. It couldn't be what I thought it was but as I peeled away the paper and thumbed the glue holding it together I realized it was everything I had feared.
Shock overcame me a bit, I was sitting in front of my mother, aunt and grandmother when it happened and I tried to hide my disdain. Everyone scattered a bit and I found that my mind cringed like a coward. Oh you can get out of this I thought. Just go away, don't look at it maybe it will dissapear. No you can't do that, call them they'll understand you. No this is the army, there is no compassion in this letter or for what you're going to ask. Later I was ashamed at my reaction, but more shocked than anything.
My mother let the dog in and a scent flowed throughout the house. My mind was scattered considering options. That smell though, it was everywhere what could it be? I was irratated, had the dog rolled in fuel oil? No, it was more like a dead animal or some other unthinkable scenario. Then it donned on us that the dog had found a skunk. What impeccable timing! He rolled around the house and we chased him as he spread the funk everywhere.
I collected my thoughts that night in bed amid the skunks stench. I wont lie, I was deathly afraid at this point (and obsessivly paranoid that I would smell of skunk for eternity). There's nothing so terrifying to me as the unkown and my mind would play horrible tricks and ask terrible questions that I simply could not answer.
Within the two weeks I had to prepare to leave I did get over my initial fear and while I was ashamed at the time I feel like it was perfectly acceptable looking back. All the people I've talked to have given their "letter stories" a pass around the bar table but I was the only one who had a skunk involved. Fate had a sense of humor that day, the contemptible bastard.
