PLDC

Primary Leadership Development Course.  I was recommended to go.  You have to be an E4 (p) or above to go.  That is, E4, Promotable.  And that means having been to and passed the E5 board.  And guess what --I did and so -- I was on my way to PLDC.

And I didn't wanna go.  Nope, I really didn't.

Because . . .

I wasn't so much career oriented because I just wanted to do my 3 1/2 years and go home and put the whole Army business behind me. 

I was terrified of Army stuff like -- real Army stuff.   You know, that whole business of "Be All That You Can Be" --that was for strong Army soldiers.  I was just a JAG clerk and my greatest accomplishment in the Army was behind a desk. 

I knew I was going to have to run -- A LOT and I wasn't a fast/good runner.

I'd not see Newsome probably the entire time I was gone.  We'd have to stay at school unless we earned weekend passes.

I had Drill Sergeant flashbacks from my previous training days. 

Like the time I was supposed to be standing at the position of Attention and a bee started flying around my head so I swated him away --- and I got yelled at (for a long time and very very loudly) and had to drop and "Give me 20!", which meant, 20 push-ups only I wasn't able to even crank out 3 (at the time).

Or like the time I lost my headgear (Army way of saying "hat") while we were inside a building for training and it being like -a mortal Army sin to be outdoors in uniform without any headgear on, I had no choice so I got into formation like you know, no big deal I'm without head covering and when Drill Sergeant just couldn't believe his eyes and called me out in front of the entire company and yelled at me and humiliated me AND THEN - -all the way back to our barracks while the company was marching in a dressed-right-dressed formation, I had to run around entire said formation with both of my hands on my head while yelling, "I WILL NOT LOOSE MY HEADGEAR, DRILL SERGEANT!" over and over. 

And that flashback of the time I took a bore brush (to this day still have no clue what a bore brush is or what its intended purpose is) and stuffed it down the barrel of my M-16 riffle to you know, clean it like a good soldier should, and got said bore brush stuck into the barrel of my M-16 riffle and had to go into the dreaded Drill Sergeant tent (we were on a field training exercise) and ask the Drill to get the bore brush OUT of my M-16 riffle.  Here's the thing, going into the Drill tent was like being sent to the principal's office --only a lot worse.  My Drill looked at my riffle, handed over to the next Drill, then the next --they just kept passing my M-16 A1 riffle around all the while -- laughing uncontrollably, slapping their knees, tears rolling down their face while they manage to mutter, "That's the dam---- thing I ever saw!  In all my years of drilling . . . . I never saw anyone manage . . . ."  All the while me, stupid Private E-nothing standing there wishing I could disappear . . .   And unknown to me at the time, a whole group of other Private E-nothings had gathered around the tent to try and hear what all that ruckus was about.  And then when the laughter finally subsided, all that was left was me and the wrath of the Drill Sergeant.

Okay so yes --it was those flashbacks that made me just a bit leery to go to another Army training environment.

And the fact that I worked in JAG and so I was privy to some information about some former PLDC NCO's that we had court-martialed (one ended up in prison) and so yeah, I really really wasn't happy about having to go. 

In fact, I was downright terrified!