Exposed

Each day was filled with classroom instruction. It was boring stuff, very boring stuff but you know, just your standard military fare. I had two instructors and they took turns doing a block of instruction. Once we completed a unit we were given a written test. If you failed, you could take the test two more times but after three failures, you were out of the course.

One of my instructors was new to PLDC so he was kind of taken under the wing of the more seasoned instructor. The new guy was Hispanic and spoke with a heavy accent. He was very tall & lanky. He had thick jet black hair and a bushy jet black mustache. He was funny, always making jokes and hardly ever staying on task. At first I preferred his instruction because well –he really just sat up there and told stories and told jokes so it was entertaining but I soon realized he wasn’t giving us the content we needed for the tests so I began to dread his instruction blocks. And as if having all (or most) of my peers hate me wasn’t enough, I could tell this guy didn’t care for me much either. He never made eye contact with me. Whenever he’d ask a question and I had my hand raised, he never called on me –even if I was the only one with my hand up. He pretty much ignored the fact that I was in the room. One time, during a block of instruction that covered something to do with weapons, he was describing his M-16 rifle as if it were his male body part until I spoke up and said, “Hey!”. He looked over at me, rolled his eyes then said, “Ah man, forget it!” then dropped the subject. He acted like a little boy who just got his favorite toy taken from him.

I was pretty much used to stuff like this –male soldiers forgetting female soldiers were around or male soldiers just not caring and acting stupid and inappropriate. It happened a lot and for the most part, they’d stop when you asked them to and it wasn’t a big deal. I don’t condone the behavior but I sort of understood the male point of view. It’s like a group of guys getting together to play a game of football and suddenly your Mom shows up and demands your little sister play too. Now all the rules of the game have changed and you can’t play like you want to. You went from playing a rough game of tackle football to basically just tossing the ball around. It’s not what you signed up for. I understand it can be tough to switch gears like that but at the same time, there are just certain things women should not have to tolerate.

We took a short break and then returned to the classroom. I guess the whole time this “female business” had been eating away at my instructor because he came back all agitated and tense. At first I wasn’t sure what his problem was but it was no time at all before all his thoughts and emotions came bursting through.

Right there in the middle of class he burst out and looked at me and yelled with is thick Hispanic accent:

YOU SIT-A THERE THINKING YOU-S A SOLDIER BUT YOU CAN’T EVEN BE A SOLDIER.   YOU CAN'T EVEN GO TO WAR.  WHY THE ARMY LETS WOMAN IN I -A DON’T UNDERSTAND. YOU-S SUPPOSE TO BE HOME COOK’N DA FOOD, HAV’N DA BABIES, TAKING CARE OF YOUR MAN BUT LOOK AT YOU! LOOK AT YOU SITTING THERE TAKING UP SPACE IN THE ARMY THAT A MAN COULD HAVE. A MAN NEEDS YOUR JOB NOT YOU! AND LOOK AT YOU! YOUS WEARING MAN CLOTHES. YOU THINK-A YOU LOOK GOOD? ATTRACTIVE? YOU THINK-A ANY OF THESE GUYS *waves hand around the room* LOOK-A AT YOU AND THINK THEY WANNA TAKE YOU HOME TO MEET THEIR MAMMA AND HAVE THEIR BABIES? HELL NO! OH SURE, THEY MIGHT WANNA F*** YOU BUT THAT’S ABOUT IT –THAT’S ALL YOUS-A GOOD FOR –A GOOD F*** CUZ NO ONE HERE WANTS TO TAKE A GIRL DRESSED IN MAN CLOTHES HOME TO MEET-A THEIR MAMMA!  YOU WANNA BE A REAL SOLDIER?  I SAY GET YOUR A** OUT ON THE FRONT LINE AND SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE REALLY MADE OF.  WOMEN CAN'T GO TO WAR?  I SAY THATS-A SOME BULL SH**!  YOU-S WANNA DRESS-A LIKE DA MAN AND ACT LIKE DA MAN --THEN YOU BE THE MAN TOO!

Dead silence fell upon the room.

I dropped my head and just sat staring at my desk. I had no words, no reaction. I felt numb. Little did that Sergeant know that he had unearthed my deepest insecurity –being a female soldier. There wasn’t one moment I had ever felt confident in my soldiering skills. There was never a moment I didn’t HATE wearing my BDU uniform (which they claim is unisex but it really is just made for men). And deeper in my heart than even that, there was this desire in wanting to be a wife and mother. I didn’t want to be a soldier. I didn’t want to be a career woman. I wanted to be a wife. I wanted to love and be loved. I wanted to be a mother just like the woman my mother was. I wanted to have babies and love my babies and take care of my babies. With the exception of Connie, no one knew that about me –not even my family or sisters. My longings for those things weren’t just something I wanted –it was who I was meant to be. I felt incomplete and I felt like a failure.

And now, I felt exposed even more exposed than being walked in on in the shower.

After what seemed an eternity of silence, I heard one of the male soldiers kind of quietly say, “Come on man, that was uncalled for and unfair. You can’t say stuff like that.”

My neck, face and tips of my ears felt like they were on fire, I knew I was flushed with embarrassment and I didn’t want to lift my head but I didn’t want to sit there like some whipped puppy dog either. So I lifted my head and I looked my instructor dead in the eyes and through my stare I tried to muster up as much confidence as I could but he couldn’t even stand to look at me –he quickly turned his face from me and said, “Ah man forget-da about it.”

And every insecurity within me was unleashed.