Purple Rain #5

It was March of my senior year at military school. As a vice squadron commander I had only three more months until no longer I would have to deal with the squaking of the squadron commander and the wing commander and I'd be off to my percieved paradice, college. After a long, hard, day of classes and drilling, just as I was taking off my clothes, the high-pitched fire alarm went off. Shit.

About half the wing bumbled out of the dorms to the parking lot outside the gym. The flight commanders sleepily tried to form ranks with their respective flights with the squadron commanders nodding whist yawning. After 15 minutes, none of the wing staff (the people at the highest of the military totem pole) showed up so everybody trampled off to bed. I got in bed and started drifting away in sleep. The high-pitched wail of the damn fire alarm again disturbed by sleep. I quickly sliped on a pair of khakis and went outside.

This time, the wing staff actually bothered to show up. After the flight commanders managed to form up their tired flights, a faculty member nearest the wing commander began yelling at the assembled corps for leaving so early after the first fire alarm. He then wailed, "Everybody drop for 20!" But nobody did. Instead they laughed at him for trying to drop the entire cadet corps for doing what seemed to be the rational decision. The situation became a standstill; the faculty member and the wing staff refused to let the corps go back to their dorm until they did the twenty push-ups, while the corps refused to do the punh-ups. Even the officers were in open rebellion; some, in fact, ordered their cadets not to drop. After several minutes of this non-sense, I decided I would end the confrontation. I, as an officer, "took the initive" and dropped. Now if this was a movie, you'd expect some motivating music to play in the background as others, one by one joined me. Bullshit.

Almost immediatly, I was jeered by all around me, some of them even throwing miscellanous crap at me. My immidate commanding officer, the squadron commander, even ordered me to get up. The faculty member and the wing staff outranked him though, so I stayed down. But then, after I had been down for over a minute with nobody joining me, the faculty member and the wing staff dismissed the cadets to the corps. I was furious. I had tried to obey their order, much to the jeering of others, and they ran away form the situation, leaving me standed and looking like an idiot. I stomped back into my room and went to bed; hopefully a good nights sleep would erase all hard feelings.

The fucking alarm went off an hour later.

I woke up dreary and confused, and by that time the portly FTO (sort of like a faculty RA) began banging on my door telling me to get out right this instant.

"Let me find some clean pants on..." I pleaded

"Get out NOW!" the FTO blubbered back.

I, pressed for time, put on flip-flops and wrapped my self dressed only in boxers with a blanket. As I was walking out, one of the cadets in my squadron said that he respected me and we has goign to drop down, but he was just afraid. Sigh... I arrived at the parking lot outside the gym for the third time that night. Just then, someone who had obviously been drinking slured about how cold he was and yanked my blanket from me, leaving me in only boxers. In front of the entire cadet corps.

Everybody in my high school just saw me in only my boxers.

Before I had time to get embarrased however, the wing commander yelled at me for being "disgusting". The wing commander looked at acted like an immature little boy who sounded like Pee Wee Herman; he only got to his position by kissing up to his superiors and his parents donating loads of money to the school. I called back to him that my blanket had just been taken. And then he responded by telling me to drop for disrespect.

And then...I snapped. Just snapped... in front of all my fellow classmates, leaving my unexpressed rage, you could say naked.

(Story to be completed later)