GatorFarmer
Member
It's March and I've seen lizards sunning themselves on the fence in the backyard. I'm not sure what kind they are. Some are green, some are brown. All move fast and have thus far eluded attempts at capture. Perhaps the small net I bought a Walmart will fix that. I always wanted a pet lizard, and it amuses me to think that something that sells for forty dollars at a pet store is now free in the back yard. I'm hoping that they eat sand fleas and the dreaded mosquito.
The woman that manages the housing office said only half joking that there might be an alligator in a nearby pond. There are certainly otters.
Such was my introduction, along with driving past the palmetto trees that line the streets, was my first introduction to the flora and fauna here. ("Palmetto?" My wife said. "Those are the things that they put in cocktail olives, those don't grow on trees.")
Full Metal Jacket was playing on the DVD player in the backseat for Liam when I got here. It was on a loop for the trip down. It looks little like the film save by accident. Since Kubrick went insane and refused to fly, that film was shot in England where it rains a lot and was gray. Coincidentally, it's been a rainy and overcast time here (cutting down on my lizard catching oppotunities).
The vast majority of people who experience Parris Island likely visit it by the simple expedient of joining the Marine Corps. Recruits that sign up in the Eastern half of the U.S. go here for recruit training. (Those in the West go to San Diego.)
I've gotten to see it through a somewhat different path. Longtime forum members will doubtless recall that I personally never opted for a military career. I'd actually been accepted to Air Force OTS way back at the turn of the century, but opted out after finding out that I was probably going to be spending a first tour OPEX sitting in a silo with a launch key around my neck. Instead, my introduction to military culture came via a relatively unusual route. I found myself becoming a military spouse, one of a rare handful of male dependents of female service members that are themselves neither currently serving nor prior service. Rarer still, this happened to me as a relatively mature (30 something) college educated adult, seperating me from the relatively young women that usually make up the bulk of new military spouses.
Somewhat comically, and owing to the uncommon nature of my situation, it is generally assumed by virtually everyone at first that I'm the one in the military and my wife is the dependent. I guess in some ways I look more the part despite being a mere homemaker.
Previously I'd never lived on base, providing some insulation from a full immersion. Thus it was still an interesting sight, having only been here a few days, to actually see Marine DIs as a common sight, waiting in line for lunch, buying sodas, cigarettes, pumping gas, etc. ("Hats" as they are referenced here do get some close in parking spaces at the back of the Exchange. Closer to the doors actually than a general got at Quantico. Oddly fitting somehow.) Groups of recruits march across the roads regularly, and I can hear the sound of rifles and chanted cadences in the distance daily. Thanks to a nearby airbase, I also now get to see F18s flying overhead instead of just helos. In a few years I suppose the boys will be amazed by that, I would have been as a kid.
(Guns are popular among young Marines. Despite some issues regarding registering guns on base with the civilian contract staff in charge of such - another story for another time, though I'm told that I came close to setting a record of sorts... The exchange here is number 2 in the system for firearms sales, or so I'm told. Quantico was number one in package liquor sales. I'm not sure what that means overall, but it is interesting I suppose.)
My neighbor is a former DI now assigned to a weapon's battalion. He seems like a good guy. There's a purple heart emblem on his truck, speaking of at least one combat wound. He and his wife have a son around the age of my oldest that they call Bubba. He seems like a nice kid for all that he stole my son's ball. Eh. He too only talks in broken words, so maybe Liam isn't so abnormal after all. (My wife is Navy, but a corpsman, which grants a certain unusual status amongst Marines and in Marine culture.)
Still, despite having lived around the Marines in Quantico, and often visiting the Marine Museum with the boys, I don't think that I really truly appreciated them until I came here. There's a gulf between the recruits and the permanent personnel, right down to there being special check out lanes for those permanently assigned here. This seems to result in a certain comraderie and also professional pride in those permanently here. Or perhaps it is just the relative friendliness of South Carolina. Thus I may be the only person ever to have remarked upon arrival at Parris Island "Huh, everyone is so friendly here. That's sort of nice."
Anyway, as I was going back to the Exchange to pick up my wife today, I stopped to let a group of recruits cross the road since it was raining. In theory they'd have the right of way, but for small groups there seems to be an unwritten rule at times to make them wait until traffic clears. The permanent personnel gulf doesn't apply so much to me, since I'm just a lowly civvy, thus I figured that since I was dry, that those in the rain ought be waved on.
Strikingly, the recruits went into their hustle formation to cross the road almost effortlessly. They broke into double time that was far more dignified than the half jog that many people reflexively do in supermarket parking lots. One man broke to the side to serve as road guard and stood at attention with his hand out to block traffic. While not as polished as the Marine drill teams that we sometimes see on TV, it was all the more striking in that this was just a group of young men, almost kids really, yet they still had a certain silent poise and bearing to them.
I think that I get to see a side of this place that few people ever do - MPs that will laugh at a joke, DIs drinking lattes and chatting, etc - and from a different perspective. Without any of the gung ho militarism of the scoundrel patriots, I'm still left quietly impressed by the zeal and character of these young Marines that I see. I'm a skeptic at heart, but I certainly never saw anyone quite so motivated or driven in either college or graduate school and certainly not in law school (which yielded a finer crop of degenerates than is usually seen).
Being a career NCO, my wife doesn't want to see either of our sons enlist in the military, feeling that her sacrifice ought insure that they can find something better than what she sees as a blue collar opportunity. However even she admits that if our son were to join the Marines, that there are certainly worse ways to spend a few years. (As I point out, if nothing else, there are people around to keep you from choking in your own vomit, unlike in college where that'd just be funny.)
It's a risk that it may sound trite and may seem almost naive to observe, something from another era, but I honestly believe that if more people could see the things that I see, that they would have a better understanding of those in the Marines. They're not action movie stereotypes, but real people with real feelings and real problems, yet through how they mold themselves and what they become, there truly is something different about them at times. Something that the rest of us are lucky to have around.
The woman that manages the housing office said only half joking that there might be an alligator in a nearby pond. There are certainly otters.
Such was my introduction, along with driving past the palmetto trees that line the streets, was my first introduction to the flora and fauna here. ("Palmetto?" My wife said. "Those are the things that they put in cocktail olives, those don't grow on trees.")
Full Metal Jacket was playing on the DVD player in the backseat for Liam when I got here. It was on a loop for the trip down. It looks little like the film save by accident. Since Kubrick went insane and refused to fly, that film was shot in England where it rains a lot and was gray. Coincidentally, it's been a rainy and overcast time here (cutting down on my lizard catching oppotunities).
The vast majority of people who experience Parris Island likely visit it by the simple expedient of joining the Marine Corps. Recruits that sign up in the Eastern half of the U.S. go here for recruit training. (Those in the West go to San Diego.)
I've gotten to see it through a somewhat different path. Longtime forum members will doubtless recall that I personally never opted for a military career. I'd actually been accepted to Air Force OTS way back at the turn of the century, but opted out after finding out that I was probably going to be spending a first tour OPEX sitting in a silo with a launch key around my neck. Instead, my introduction to military culture came via a relatively unusual route. I found myself becoming a military spouse, one of a rare handful of male dependents of female service members that are themselves neither currently serving nor prior service. Rarer still, this happened to me as a relatively mature (30 something) college educated adult, seperating me from the relatively young women that usually make up the bulk of new military spouses.
Somewhat comically, and owing to the uncommon nature of my situation, it is generally assumed by virtually everyone at first that I'm the one in the military and my wife is the dependent. I guess in some ways I look more the part despite being a mere homemaker.
Previously I'd never lived on base, providing some insulation from a full immersion. Thus it was still an interesting sight, having only been here a few days, to actually see Marine DIs as a common sight, waiting in line for lunch, buying sodas, cigarettes, pumping gas, etc. ("Hats" as they are referenced here do get some close in parking spaces at the back of the Exchange. Closer to the doors actually than a general got at Quantico. Oddly fitting somehow.) Groups of recruits march across the roads regularly, and I can hear the sound of rifles and chanted cadences in the distance daily. Thanks to a nearby airbase, I also now get to see F18s flying overhead instead of just helos. In a few years I suppose the boys will be amazed by that, I would have been as a kid.
(Guns are popular among young Marines. Despite some issues regarding registering guns on base with the civilian contract staff in charge of such - another story for another time, though I'm told that I came close to setting a record of sorts... The exchange here is number 2 in the system for firearms sales, or so I'm told. Quantico was number one in package liquor sales. I'm not sure what that means overall, but it is interesting I suppose.)
My neighbor is a former DI now assigned to a weapon's battalion. He seems like a good guy. There's a purple heart emblem on his truck, speaking of at least one combat wound. He and his wife have a son around the age of my oldest that they call Bubba. He seems like a nice kid for all that he stole my son's ball. Eh. He too only talks in broken words, so maybe Liam isn't so abnormal after all. (My wife is Navy, but a corpsman, which grants a certain unusual status amongst Marines and in Marine culture.)
Still, despite having lived around the Marines in Quantico, and often visiting the Marine Museum with the boys, I don't think that I really truly appreciated them until I came here. There's a gulf between the recruits and the permanent personnel, right down to there being special check out lanes for those permanently assigned here. This seems to result in a certain comraderie and also professional pride in those permanently here. Or perhaps it is just the relative friendliness of South Carolina. Thus I may be the only person ever to have remarked upon arrival at Parris Island "Huh, everyone is so friendly here. That's sort of nice."
Anyway, as I was going back to the Exchange to pick up my wife today, I stopped to let a group of recruits cross the road since it was raining. In theory they'd have the right of way, but for small groups there seems to be an unwritten rule at times to make them wait until traffic clears. The permanent personnel gulf doesn't apply so much to me, since I'm just a lowly civvy, thus I figured that since I was dry, that those in the rain ought be waved on.
Strikingly, the recruits went into their hustle formation to cross the road almost effortlessly. They broke into double time that was far more dignified than the half jog that many people reflexively do in supermarket parking lots. One man broke to the side to serve as road guard and stood at attention with his hand out to block traffic. While not as polished as the Marine drill teams that we sometimes see on TV, it was all the more striking in that this was just a group of young men, almost kids really, yet they still had a certain silent poise and bearing to them.
I think that I get to see a side of this place that few people ever do - MPs that will laugh at a joke, DIs drinking lattes and chatting, etc - and from a different perspective. Without any of the gung ho militarism of the scoundrel patriots, I'm still left quietly impressed by the zeal and character of these young Marines that I see. I'm a skeptic at heart, but I certainly never saw anyone quite so motivated or driven in either college or graduate school and certainly not in law school (which yielded a finer crop of degenerates than is usually seen).
Being a career NCO, my wife doesn't want to see either of our sons enlist in the military, feeling that her sacrifice ought insure that they can find something better than what she sees as a blue collar opportunity. However even she admits that if our son were to join the Marines, that there are certainly worse ways to spend a few years. (As I point out, if nothing else, there are people around to keep you from choking in your own vomit, unlike in college where that'd just be funny.)
It's a risk that it may sound trite and may seem almost naive to observe, something from another era, but I honestly believe that if more people could see the things that I see, that they would have a better understanding of those in the Marines. They're not action movie stereotypes, but real people with real feelings and real problems, yet through how they mold themselves and what they become, there truly is something different about them at times. Something that the rest of us are lucky to have around.
