trainees.jpg3708th Basic Military Training Squadron, Flight 262, Dorm A7, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas. March 30, 1991.

Four o’clock in the morning. Maybe. Didn’t have a watch. It was f-ing early, that much I know.

They woke us all up at 3am yesterday in NYC, hustled us to the airport, flew us to San Antonio, ran us all over the place until we finally were allowed to go to bed at 4am. Forty-nine guys asleep and me lying there awake. On the first night of basic training, the guy next to me wouldn’t stop snoring.

Not just your ordinary snoring, of course, but the deep, wet, sloppy, “you think he’s done but then he’s not” elephant-snoring, the kind that ruins marriages. The kind that reduces concrete dormitories to rubble. The kind that keep me awake.

The beds were aligned side-by-side, but alternating head/feet directions so nobody breathed on each other at night or could look each other in the eye. So when I reached over to wake him up, I tapped his calf with the tip of my index finger.

He didn’t stop snoring. Heck, he didn’t even move. If anything the snoring grew worse. I pushed his leg. No effect. I shoved. Nada. I ever so slightly closed my fist and tapped him with that.

Zero.

I sat up and hit his leg. With authority. How could he sleep through that? He must be dead, but he’s still snoring, so he’s obviously not. And I punched his calf again. And again.

He. Is. Still. Asleep.

Now I was really torqued. From my fist, I extended the knuckle from my middle finger while keeping the fingers coiled, reared back like Tom Seaver, and blasted him in the calf with that. Twice. Three times! Stop snoring, you tree-climbing bed-wetter!

He was still asleep.

Whatever sense of rational thought I had left got up and hotfooted it back to the airport. Grabbing his ankle with my left hand, I drove my knuckle-fist deep and hard into his flesh, hoping to reach his bone and leave an imprint upon it. Although I didn’t make a sound, in my head I was screaming like a blood-thirsty warrior demanding my enemy submit to my will!

And he didn’t even flinch. But he did let out one h#ll of a good “snark-snore”.

OK, I surrender. He’s going to snore all night, I’ll just have to live with it. I laid back down and stared into nothingness as the snores shook the ceiling tiles. Eventually, thankfully, and fitfully, sleep finally took me.

GET UP!! Five in the morning and the guy bashing a trash can woke us up to blazing lights and screaming instructors wearing big black hats. Their invasion reminded us all that the previous day was no dream, we really were in basic training. We all jumped out of bed and stood quivering with our backs to the wall lockers and let them scream at us, as it seemed that’s the only thing that really made them happy.

Except our bed-side neighbor wasn’t with us against the lockers. He was on the floor, actually, screaming and clutching his leg. Nobody had heard him over the trash-can percussion and insult-chorus. What the heck was wrong with him? The instructors ran over to him and spat-screamed at him, demanding to know why he wasn’t making them happy and standing against the lockers.

They lifted him up and his calf was purple. He had tried to jump out of bed, but his leg gave out from under him due to the blindingly intense pain that was shooting up it. Wow, look at that mess. What the heck happened to his leg? Bedbugs? Scorpions?

…

Um. Oh. Yeah.

They made him shake it off and stand on one foot against the locker, then spat-screamed at him once more because they had stopped and needed to get their vocal-engines primed. And they all took off down the line, skipping me entirely. My face was quite dry.

On the one hand, I felt really bad. I’d never injured a defenseless person before. Honestly, in my sleepless delirium, I had no clue I was injuring him at all. Resorting to fisticuffs is just not how I roll.

But if I have to be completely honest, I must admit that I had to work really, really hard not to grin. I knew the instructors would’ve used it as an excuse to spittle-scream in my face. Which they never did the entire time I was there.

There are three more Airman Howell at Basic Training tales, minimum. No more injuries occur, but one involves a rather unpleasant and unfortunate reference to male genitals, while another permits me to get to tell one of my two famous Dancing Stories.

Which one should I write first…