The longest day known to man

I went to meps yesterday. Anyone who has ever been enlisted or commissioned into any branch of the Armed forces whether it was for a ROTC schollarship or it was for the draft back in Nam' has their own story of this being the longest day known to man.
I wake up at 4 am, get ready and am downstairs within 5 minutes. I wait in a long line to eat powdered eggs and a piece of either over cooked or undercooked "sausage" but I rejoice because food is food and I hadn't had much of it the day before. Then I wait in another line to get on one of 2 charter busses. I'm just now started to realize that today will be more about waiting in line than anything else.
Once at meps, I get into a column and have 2 soldiers yelling at us. I think they forget that as of today, we are still civilians. There's not much they could do to us. What? Kick us out of meps, I'll just come back tomorrow.
We go through the whole check point and bag search phase and lock our bags into a locker. After that I go to wait in line. This is when a nurse asks for info from me. Then I go to take an eye exam which I get 20/20 vision and no colorblindness.
After that I go to wait in line, then do the urine sample, then another line to get blood drawn, then another to have an interview with a doctor. He asks questions and etc. I was told after this interview that I could slip on my hearing aids to cheat on the hearing test. Not by the doctor nor by my recruiter. Just a few other people I talked to about this. Do I do this? No, I am noble and know there are waivers for hearing loss.
So I go in to take the test and we find it that I sucked pretty bad at the test. I'm talking I got a 50 decimal range in a few spots. I took another and my hearing shifted pretty drastically. Parts where I did good the first time, I did bad in and parts where I did bad in the first time I did good in. I know I have bad hearing, I won't lie to you. But those tests aren't accurate. I know that. Because I hear much better than those tests show.
So then after that, I go through the whole flex tests and such. I get out at 11 and find that because of the hearing I am disqualified. For some reason the Sgt. who issued the test writes "not recommended waiver" when the only thing she is allowed to do is request me for another doctor interview. She was getting on my nerves, she kept saying that I have speech impairment and that I have a tube in my ear drum. I told her I didn't and it is probably genetic and she said that I'm lying and wrote me up for fraudulent enlistment. But I wasn't lying and the doctor proved it by scoping my ears. She probably just hates her job, being an E-5, she act like a drill sgt. She was spending more time complaining and yelling at people than actually doing her damn job. She knew nothing about the causes of hearing loss, it makes me wonder how she got stuck with working at MEPS... I mean who joins the military to work at meps? I think it's a punishment job.
Anyways, so after that I turn in the papers to the army command center at meps and they tell me to see an audiologist for a full evaluation and whatever the audiologist says will go. That is what I will be doing in about an hour. My recruiter has high hopes because my asvab score is so high. I also don't have any criminal history, or any other physical dissabilities. My job won't be on the front lines and *bing* I have heairing aids to wear to work. So hopefully I get that waiver before my ship out date. Oh and guess when that is. It's in 6 days. I need that waiver in 5 days from now. So if you crop out the weekend, I litterally have 3 days to get that waiver. Once I give my recruiter the letter of recomendation from the audiologist, it will be all him. He told me he could get it by Tuesday so lets see how this works out.
If not by wednesday, then I will miss my ship out date and have to wait untill late December, early January to ship. Which is a long long time from now. But on the bright side, I will be able to go to my cousins wedding. What do I do if they reject my waiver? Oh I go back to my hopes and dreams of finding a way to pay for school.
Note to self: start a flipping college fund for my kids before they are even born.
I'm serious, college is hard enough to get into, but have you seen how hard it is to pay for college? I want to write for a living, be a journalist and if that means I have to join the army and be all I can be then I will do it.
I'm excited either way, I think they have it all wrong though. Because it's not in the constitution that the army has to let you fight for america then they say being a soldier isn't a right, it's a privilage. Which is cool in some sense, but the constitution says it IS our GOD GIVEN right to fight for our freedom.
That's why John Adams, a lawyer and political figure, said "what makes a man a soldier? Is it his rifle? Is it his courage? Or is it the fact that he will protect his country and its freedom no matter what? In that, I think I am a soldier."
Which I agree with, too bad politicians don't care about that anymore. Just money and votes.
Why was MEPS the longest day ever? Because I was done at 11 AM and do you know what time I was allowed to leave the waiting room? 5 PM. In a hard chair with little sleep the night before for 6 hours. Not fun, but hey... it's meps and I will never have to go through all of that again... until I ship out.
-jeff