Blog #5           A Cultural Event

When I was 17 I joined the National Guard, shortly after I enlisted I was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina to attend basic training.  I remember being on a big bus full of people of all different races and religions.  I had never seen so many different kinds of people before.

Being from Helena, Montana I was not used to such different people.  People who were not white or Native American stuck out like a sore thumb in Helena.  I had always thought people with tan skin tone that spoke Spanish as their first language were without a doubt from Mexico.  On the bus I think I accidentally offended a girl who fit that description because I assumed that she was from Mexico and she was actually from Guatemala. 

 I had never been around many black people, my friend Jamie (who I graduated with) was black, but there was nothing really different about her.  I do not recall ever meeting an Asian, Middle Easterner, or really anyone else from the million races in the world.  I had realized that I was in fact sheltered, and that the culture shock was about to be a rude awakening.

I stepped off of the bus to all of these drill sergeants yelling “toe the line privates!” All of the Drill Sergeant’s looked different but not one of them was white. As these angry people were yelling at me and everyone else I heard many different accents.

 It wasn't long after I stood on the line that I had a short tan skinned male drill sergeant and a big black female drill sergeant screaming in my face.  The drill sergeants immediately made us get into the push up position while yelling “you don’t know what you got your selves into” and “you’re going to wish that you were never born, your mine now!”

They made us do many different exercises, keeping their promises to make us wish that we had never been born.  My heart was pounding and I wanted to cry, I was scared. 

That was my first experience with others outside of my own race and honestly I was not too thrilled.  I had wondered how someone could be so mean and if they were always this mean. I was wondering what I had gotten myself into and wanted to turn right around and head back to my sheltered little town in Montana.

The weeks passed buy in this hell that I had for some reason signed up for, but mid-way I had started to adapt.  I made a few friends of all different races and all indeed different values and upbringings than I.  We were all each other had and we had to stick together and make it through.  I soon realized that it wasn't the race that made someone mean, it was the title of Drill Sergeant.

I have met many wonderful people throughout my career in the Guard and going to different training in different states.  I am friends with a lot of them on Facebook and keep in touch with a few of them regularly.  I am happy to have had this experience even though I would not do it again even if someone paid me.