Defining Life Moment #2

My friend Jeff came up to me one day after school let out and said “I am going to talk to a Navy recruiter, you want to go?” This is my defining life moment number two.

I was a senior in high school and Jeff was only a junior. We were part of a gang of five or six guys that didn’t seem to fit into any of the normal clicks in high school. We weren’t jocks or geeks or stoners. None of us were overly popular, but we were all known in school. Maybe that is why I am not your typical guy today as I was never typical growing up. Of the gang, Jeff and I were the closest of friends.

Well, I immediately said no as I was not interested in joining the military. I didn’t know what I was going to do after high school. I hadn’t taken high school very seriously, so my grades sucked. I basically did just enough to get out of high school, so it wasn’t as though college was a real option.

I agreed to go with him and we met with a Navy recruiter. He talked with us about the opportunities in the Navy and training you could get. He talked us both into taking the pre-test they have to see what jobs we might qualify for in the Navy. We didn’t see any harm in it so we made the appointment and took the test.

Both of us scored very high on the test. You see I was intelligent, but not motivated during high school. In fact I scored so high on the test that I qualified to go to any school I wanted in the Navy. They even asked me to a second test as they wanted me to go to Nuclear training schools. Can you imagine, I couldn’t get into a community college, but they would let me be in control of nuclear missiles. Doesn’t that scare you a little? I declined the nuclear program, but I did agree to look through the rest of the schools and see if something interested me.

I settled on Electronics Technician. I didn’t know much about electronics, but the training seemed like something that would translate to the real world and might allow me to make a decent living when I got out of the Navy. At least it would keep me from working for the railroad my whole life like my dad did.

Now I was only 17 years old and in order to sign up, I needed my parent’s approval. Needless to say, my parents were not thrilled. My dad could not understand how I could say I did not want to go to college because I was tired of school, but was willing to go into the Navy and go to a training school for 18 months. I will admit he had a point, but I think the decision was more about the opportunity to go experience something other than the ghetto I had grown up in. My parent agreed and they signed the papers.

I wasn’t even out of high school and I was already committed to going into the Navy. It turned out to be a good decision. My Navy training gave me the career I have today. Not to mention that I matured in the Navy. I learned leadership, if you can learn that. It is more likely I always had it, but they helped me develop it.

When I hear people talk about college, I often wish I had gone for the experience, but I can’t imagine my life today if Jeff hadn’t asked me that question after class one day. As for Jeff, well he didn’t want to wait for another year to finish high school. He took his GED as a junior and joined the Marines. I saw him after boot camp and we laughed about high school and looked to our futures. I never saw him again.