I thanked you at the end of this post for letting me vent!!
I drove from staten island to brooklyn, then though staten island again to fort dix in nj and then back through staten island to brooklyn and then home to staten island FOUR times, preparing for this 5 month camp.
I spent easily several hundred on things he needed. Each trip cost about 80.
And he didn’t last 6 days. AND he cursed out the national guard guys on the way out.
AND I had to pick him up because they don’t give you money to get home and his mom was begging me and her and her GOOD kid would get in trouble if he was left stranded.
thank God some stand up national guard guy drove him right next to staten island on the jersey side.
He failed himself and he crushed me.
He is going to be 18 and has 10 high school credits.
Prison or death awaits him now.
Sorry for the rant.
What a disappointment. This was only last week.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
I wouldn’t be too hard on him OR the Guard. I remember vividly the day the 150 of 500 of us who survived our FIRST morning at Jump School only to be taken into a field in Georgia in the hot July sun where we did push ups all afternoon. The UH-1s were orbiting overhead to take the fallen to the hospital. And there WERE fallen. 13 of us. While the cadre walked around saying, “Anyone who wants to leave should do so now. All you have to do is stand up.” The Lieutenant next to me wouldn’t let himself give up so his body had a seizure. I KNOW only too well what it takes to drive on and have no loss of respect for those who stand up when their body can’t keep up with their spirit. Of the 130 plus a few that were left almost all of us got our wings. But you had to survive that day (and another month of pure hell). But after that day no one was willing to relinquish that investment in ordeal.
Sure, there are screw ups that should never have been there. Like the E-6 who showed up 5 days late. We were asked to let him join us and we let him. Then he fell out on the first run on Monday morning. They made him stand at the roadside and watch us run by every morning for the remainder fo the week before they let him go back to his unit.
No way to tell which camp your boy fell into but it really doesn’t matter. That’s on him, not you.
Send him to the outward bound wilderness 30 day programs. One in the upper Peninsula of Michigan.
There is no getting out.