VMI and the Gypsy Curse

"May you get exactly what you wish for." -- Gypsy Curse.

When I was seventeen, I wished to begin training for the U.S. Army officer corps via a military school, and since neither my high school record nor political connections were exactly impeccable, ended up having to choose between the Citadel of Charleston, South Carolina, or the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. Despite knowing about Vietnam (this was a relative lull period between the fall of Saigon and the invasion of Grenada), I just had to go! My parents were supportive, though my mother suggested -- given that I was the second youngest student in my high school graduating class and had a built-in extra year for something unconventional -- that I work for a while, or do an internship or something, before putting on a uniform. She knew me far better than I did! My father had been too young for WW2 and Korea, plus he had polio as a kid, so he seemed to like the idea of one of his sons giving the Army a try. He was afraid I'd drift off and not want to go to college if I didn't attend immediately. In any case, I did go to VMI, and promptly hated it. It was sort of like prison, I suppose, except that you had to apply to get in, not commit crimes. I transferred after the first semester, eventually graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The photo is of me, at seventeen, on Visitor Day in October, showing part of the field training areas, in this case the "ropes course." VMI had an honor code, and academic cheaters were "drummed out of the Corps" in a terrifying night ceremony, the dishonored cadets names "never to be spoken again." In another Gypsy twist, one of my friends, a fellow cadet, who was too independent-minded for the brass, was the first guy drummed out. Up until that moment, I'd really wanted to see what a drum out was all about. Be careful what you wish for. Perhaps the real moral of the Gypsy Curse is -- be careful what you think you wish for. Problem is, how can you really know what's best unless you experience it?

Here's an unfinished fragment of some sort of poem that seems either too long or too short. Whatever, I wrote it, and it's not quite right, but may give a slight feel for cadet life at one particular moment, when I turned eighteen.

It’s My Eighteenth Birthday

I’m in a crowded space not much bigger than a pool room
Huddled around a Spartan table and a bottle of Jim Beam --
Six cadets in all, and Corporal Kincer
Who unscrews its cap and offers me the first drink.
Everyone looks nervous bracing for the sounds of the night watchmen.
There’s a blanket covering the transom blocking out the
Icy light from the stony barracks courtyard below.
I pass the bottle back to Kincer and, with evident gusto
Every one of the other cadets takes his own shot of whiskey in turn.

Suddenly we hear
The jangling of keys
Too late to dive for our Army cots
Too late for sparing us our inevitable punishment.
The door -- kicked open.
Our protecting blanket hits the floor.
A beefy mouthy sergeant starts shouting
Obscenities as he crashes through the room
Spit flying in every direction.

Soon the winter will wear us away
And four of us will be gone from here
Too late for sparing us the squander --
Cued back out into the world like cracked billiard balls.