Just some things...

[Kol]

After that night, things changed.

My sisters went to a relative's house, named Karen. They were treated like the ugly step-sisters. They had to wear dresses all the time (a southern baptist thing?) along with thousands of other petty things. I believe the people at Karen's house made fun of my sisters, but that my sisters never realized it. Amanda had a horrible time and was eventually sent to live at an uncle's instead. Ashley was sent to live with a relative so distant I'd never heard of. I would sometimes get to see my sisters on the weekends, and I missed them both.

My brother and I moved into our grandparents'. Some of my cousins were also living in this 3-bedroom house. Donald, Jessica, Jennifer, and Brittany. We three boys had one room, the three girls had their own room, my grandmother (who was very sick) had a room with a hospital bed, and my granddad had to sleep on the couch.

My granddad was surprised that I had started reading the Bible, but was worried that I listened to one preacher so much. We argued a lot over the Masons, because my granddaddy belonged to the Masonic Lodge and I thought this was witchcraft. The man was *not* a saint, had an addiction to nerve tablets, and was mean to the girls in the house. But he was a positive influence on all of us, and his house was like a sanctuary.

My grandmother had Crohn's disease, which basically eats away at your intestines. She had gone through too many surgeries, and we were afraid she might not live. But still she cooked every night for us, made sure everyone was up and ready for school, and kept the house as clean as possible for three teenage boys and three pre-pubescent little girls.

Because my granddad didn't like me listening to just Arnold Murray, I began to watch John Hagee and the preachers on TBN a bit. Whenever I would tell my granddad about a new preacher, he would watch them to see what I was "being fed."

In the daytime I went to school and hung out with my friends there. The friend we all called "bird" started watching Arnold Murray too, and we'd talk about him and other preachers. At night I would watch my preaching tapes and fall asleep listening to Worship Live, which played Christian music videos. And over all I kept reading my Bible.

 

[K9Guardian]

Interestig life you got there.

Mine isn't as fun, except for a plethora of ER visits.

 

[Kol]

ER visits?

So after the angels, the demons, and the UFOs, it takes an alcoholic mother to convince you something is different?

.....

My friend Jesse had a samurai sword from the Atlanta Cutlery, and a pair of practice swords he'd bought as a kid at the Renaissance Fair. We would practice with them at his house, his mom yelling at him because he was always mean to his little sister. Jesse was taking some form of martial arts in town (I don't remember what), and I asked him once if I might be good at such things. He made some joke about me being a kender, and told me I should stick to what I already knew.

My mom was in prison, and my stepdad was rarely home at time, so Jesse, Jason, and myself would sneak back in the old house to watch whatever porno Jesse had acquired. Not good, but certainly normal, and far different from my normal fare of dreams of aliens. And although we had plenty of opportunity, not a one of us ever smoked or drank.

Jason's parents had once owned a horse farm outside of Carrollton, but had got into drugs (crack cocaine) and lost all their money a long time ago. Once in a while we'd go visit the old stables, and Jason would tell me how, as a kid, he'd ride horseback across the fields near his home. There was a stream in the forest on the land, and I remember wishing so badly I could ride across it on a horse. But those things were long gone, of course.

Not once while at my granddad's did I sense aliens or anything else evil. I continued to study with Murray and to read my Bible whenever I could.

Jason helped me roll my stats, and together with Andy and Bird, we all tried a few games of pen and paper AD&D. Bird always wanted to play Hol instead (IIRC, Hol is stupid) but we never let him. We somehow all had the same lunch period at school, and some random kid once made the observation that out of everyone at the table, most wore glasses and half were reading Dragonlance. At this, Jesse got up and left.

My granddad was a mechanic at Ford, and worked on junk cars in his off time, so when I turned 16, I had a car fairly quickly. I never cared to get a license or to go anywhere, but my grandparents insisted (you'll miss your teenage years) so reluctantly I learned to drive and began to visit my friends and drive them around.

So things moved on for me and I slid back into the "normal" world, even if I did so at the bottom...

 

[K9Guardian]

Angels, demons, and UFOs are all in a day's work for the writing mind. I call it the fictive dream, borrowed from James M. Frey. Or maybe I am simply backward.

And here I was wondering if you were a Raistlin wannabe.

 

[Kol]

By the time graduation came around 2 years later, I was a completely different person.

When I had first started watching Christian preachers at my granddad's, I tuned in one night to watch Billy Graham preach salvation. I was allowed to watch television without interference from the little kids, and so I was able to pay attention and really get into the program. He was talking about light and darkness, and how all the darkness in the universe couldn't cover up the light from a single star.

I kneeled down in front of my television and prayed to Jesus to save me. I thought about my mother's life, my father (if he was still alive), and everyone else's, and knew that without Him, I might end up just as bad. I thought back to the living nightmare at my mother's and began to cry, knowing it would end up just as bad. I gave the Lord my life then, telling Him I released myself to Him, and that although I couldn't do anything with that life, I trusted in Him to make something of it.

I began to feel that I should go into missionary work, and I told my granddad this. For my 16th birthday I got a gold cross from him. He told his friends I was feeling a calling to missionary work, and I remember one or two of his preacher friends talking to me about spreading the gospel.

But other than that, I kept it a secret.

AOL was $20 an hour (gee, that's the same as...), and I remember going online and arguing with random people about Jesus and the Bible. It still makes me smile to know they had no idea they were talking with a 15 year old. But this was the first time in my life I ever felt the Holy Spirit with me, and this is very important later on. I remember practicing my evangelism on random people, and feeling this type of fire in my heart, and a deep love for God. It was God's presence with me, and after everything else, it comforted me beyond belief. It also gave me absolute confidence that I had really been called to preach.

All my friends at school were becoming grown men, and by the time I was 17 I had grown into...something. What that something was, no one seemed to know, myself least of all. Everyone else had gained muscle and height. The guys worked out in the gym and took their girlfriends home in their new cars. I stood 5'8" and weighed 99 lbs; I had yet to hit triple digits. I had a car too: an 89 SkyHawk (not Skylark), but since we lived across the street, I jumped the fence at the football field to walk home. I was sick with either the cold or a flu half the days of my life, I couldn't play any sports, and girls were generally uncomfortable around me. I had girly eyes, long hair, and a scrawny physique. I looked like a girl myself, if only a very ugly one.

None of my friends were still around. Jesse had left our group the moment the first girl let him sleep with her. Girls were now his priority. Jason and Bird had failed, Andy was a grade behind, and my friend Jeremy had gone to the Army a year before.

My only friend was this [noun, usually disparaging : a male homosexual]:

http://www.classmates.com/cmo/user/profile/photo/index.jsp?regId=478075891&viewSelfProfile=

..who was joining the Air Force. Over the course of my last year in HS, I let him talk me into doing the same. I talked to SSGT Jack Purvis at the First Tuesday Mall in Carrollton, and signed papers to leave for boot camp in September.

I was not in the normal flow of things as far as dating went (the last "girlfriend" i'd had was in kindergarten), but of course there were still a few girls I liked. The day before I left for boot camp, I saw one of these girls at the grocery store. My mother had taken me to buy the list of things I would need in basic. This girl was working the register, and my mom blabbed to her where I was about to go. Surprise went across the girl's face, and the slightest spark of a hint of interest. I got so embarassed, I blushed a bright crimson red and hid my face.

...

 

[Kol]

Wannabe???

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Raistlin_Majere

 

[Kol]

Over the course of those last 2 years at home, I had tried my best to dissect my supernatural capers.

The whole alien thing could easily have been imagined. That didn't mean aliens weren't real, but there was nothing concrete to say that I myself had experienced them. The pre-existence memories could very possibly be real, but what parts I genuinely remembered, and what parts I had creatively filled in, would be anyone's guess. The whole thing about some woman I thought I'd slept with was obviously some 13yo's wet dream gone wrong. We each die once. The fact that I thought my sister was some celestial I had known just meant that I had spent too much time with her, which was no doubt true. I had probably just colored her in to my possible memory. The fact that I thought she was involved in all this just made me doubly sure I had imagined most of it.

The bottom line was, all of this had happened when I tried to "contact ancient gods", and being a Christian now, I knew what those gods would really be. The worship of demons. No wonder so much had happened.

I let go of it all. It no longer mattered. What mattered was God, and preaching the word of the Lord, saving souls.

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

I needed to stop worrying so much about angels and what I "had seen" and worry more about staying in touch with Christ Jesus, our lord and Savior.

And so I did. I let all these things pass from my mind. I was a normal (well, somewhat) teenage kid, and I'd had all kinds of problems growing up, with my mother and all. But I had to stay on this side of sanity/reality. God needed me here, not with my head in the clouds.

So feeling absolutely pure in the Lord, I graduated HS with a fresh mind, free from idolatry and "idle notions".

 

[Kol]

My mother was released from prison in time to see me graduate, and afterwards I went to live with her at our old house.

My brother never came back home. He lived at our grandparents', and after my granddad was killed, my grandmother would get the half of the house he didn't. She would move out to Arizona to live with her dad, and my brother would end up living with my cousin Jennifer for a short while.

At this time though, I moved back with my mom and my sisters.

Amanda had finished kindergarten, and was excited to be going to the first grade after the summer break. Ashley was talking, and took regular breaks from stripping nude and urinating on my bedroom floor to wear her cowboy outfit and push kitties onto an icebox liferaft in her kiddie pool.

My mother watched Arnold Murray preach with me, and continued to read her Bible at night, which she'd started to do in prison. I spent days with her and most nights hung out at either Bird's or Jason's.

The last thing I did before leaving home was play Final Fantasy IV (2 US)...I finished Zeromus at 6 that morning, and got 3 hours of sleep before my mom dropped me off at the recruiter's, on my way to Air Force boot camp.

 

[Kol]

Time for a break...

At this point in my life, I'd pretty much forgotten all about aliens and demons. I figured the bhm stuff was real, but that if it was I probably wasn't supposed to remember it, and that if I was supposed to remember it, it just meant that God took care of His children and that I was being guided in my life.

I finished the first five books of the OT and read all of the NT save Acts. I taped over my episodes of the X-Files with Arnold Murray, and used a handheld voice recorder to record music from Worship Live.

Overall, I believed that Murray was right and that some people in this world had a "destiny" to stand up for God. I reasoned that I was probably one of them, and that this is why I'd had those few bizarre events. The rest could easily be explained by the fact that I had involved myself in witchcraft.

So things were pretty normal, and I eventually shipped out to basic training.

 

[K9Guardian]

My strongest memory of the Spirit being with me was the night I comfronted Rose and refused to accept her depression... Yeah, sshe ended up coming back to Him shortly after (she'd "disowned" Him five years before). I dunno what He had in mind then; I don't see any good results, except that I'm stronger and she has a better chance with Him now. I hope she's okay.

Though I wish I could feel Him that strongly again.

Of course, I am cool, so I probably will sooner than I think.

 

[Kol]

Now, don't get mad folks, but there's no way I'm gonna be able to finish this in one episode...school is on the 18th, and I have a couple of thousand miles to go before I get there. So time for me finishing this is short, and I don't know if I'm gonna have an internet connection right away while at school. I'll finish what I can.

So I was a Christian and was going off to the Air Force for money to pay for college.

I want to say something about the things I once believed and why they were not the answer for me.

Satanism got me nowhere because it was in complete disagreement with what I was looking for as a spiritualist. Satanism is based off of carnality and worldism. It claimed to be worshipping your inner self as a god, but it did so by denying the most noble parts of that inner being. What it was really worshipping then was your sin. That sin does nothing but weaken you (a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him). It's not your "desires" that make you a god, nor your adherence to them. The philosophy claimed that only by being true to yourself could you become the "god" that you were. But what it really had you do was to adhere to your animalistic side, which effectively negated the godlike side of human beings. It worshipped the fallen nature and did so by starving your spiritual self. It held a certain attraction for me because it was so different from mainstream religion. But judged on its own merits and without a grading curve, it failed.

Wicca was a much more noble and worthwhile "religion", although to me it was never seemed a religion at all, more of an understanding of nature. It's draw had started the same as satanism: it wasn't Christianity. There is a very seducing spirit or air attached to Wicca, and being able to feel those things, it was intoxicating in no small degree. It is obvious that most of the problems with the world (if not all) are caused by people. Looking at all the problems in the world caused by greed (95% right there), hate, and envy, I realized that I could certainly do without those things. I knew that these things, this worldism, didn't describe who or what I was. So Wicca's claim that the truth was with nature and that we were actually a part of this great cosmic "balance" was very agreeable to me. Nature was balanced, it was fair, and if I was Wiccan, it seemed that I could finally be a part of those things. Wicca also salved my "you're different" routine, because of course Wiccans were witches, witches had been burned by Christians, and since witches were persecuted and I felt persecuted, I was in something I could identify with. The ceremonies and the spells were also very seductive, because they seemed a legitimate way of contacting the "true elements" or "building blocks" of existence. Nature is a very beautiful and elegant system, and even today I can't say that some of the beliefs in Wicca are completely wrong. But being Wiccan is aiming too low. It's nothing more than magic, and magic is the same as science, only on a spiritual side. Science is believing what you see and hear, what you can observe, and accepting those things as fact. Wicca is just the same. If it works, do it. Faith has no part in the Wiccan "religion" because you don't ever have to continue something that doesn't work for you. But God is above creation..above what we can experience. Even if Wicca could give an answer and a complete union with everything in creation, it would fail me, because I didn't believe in just what I could see or feel, I believed in something more. More than just a progenitor or a "mother of creation", I wanted to grasp truth, and I saw truth as something more than reality. Wicca didn't hold that for me. It kept me inside of this prison, this reality. It wasn't what I was looking for. It was just a much a trap as satanism, only in a bigger box.

Which brings me to New Age.

The flaw in NewAge was that we could become gods and have a heaven of our own. Atlantis, some kind of magical empire where everyone was nice to everyone and we all knew to be true to ourselves. Karma, self-improvement...human beings *cannot* let go of this. Even here, on this Christian site, I could start a huge discussion by debating "faith vs works". Works are a radiance, nothing more. You don't strive to do works; they happen without you thinking about it. NewAge was just the same as all this though. You contacted a "guide" or guardian angel, and this being led you to learning, aka self-improvement. IMPROVEMENT COMES SOLELY BY FAITH, NOT BY WORKS, WILL, OR DESIRE. You do not make yourself better. Christ unseen "makes" you better, and that by faith in him. Anything that you do (to include good works) is a choice..we have free-will, right? But what needs to be changed isn't the ability to make good choices or to "be nice", but the inner being that feels those choices to begin with. Christ changes the desire to sin: "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God."

But NewAge doesn't allow this. It claimed that we could make ourselves better and better, by learning from our past mistakes. But the world goes on today the same as it always has. NewAge claimed that spirit beings would one day come back to start the "Golden Age", thus the term New Age. I believed this was possible for a long time, mostly because I wanted to "be good" and to be rewarded for doing so. I thought that, when the new age came, these spirits would know how I had grown as a person and continue to lead me.

The belief in God didn't negate any of this. The belief in Christ Jesus didn't either; there are plenty of Newagers who claim to have met Jesus in heaven.

There were two things that saved me from Newage. One was Arnold Murray. The Spirit was so evident in what he said and did, I could not argue (and can't even now) that God has His hand on this man. And that Spirit was at odds with the newage belief. Murray teaches adherence to Christ. Nothing more or less with bring you to God. And I chose to believe him.

The second, which I didn't like to think about (was it real, anyway?) was my thoughts while in a spiritual body with the bhm. We had been in a floating city, just like newage claimed, and there had been spirit guides and angels, just like newage claimed, but what I knew and what the bhm knew and what no one else realized, was that everything around us was a counterfeit and that the one claiming to be God was not Him at all.

New Age and out of body experiences might bring you to "heaven" but that heaven is a fool's false paradise. I knew this, but I didn't like knowing this, and so I decided without much contemplation that Christianity was right and that I had become a born-again Christian.

...don't know what else to say.

 

[Kol]

So anyhow, I went off to basic training and it was tough and I loved it. My TI was TSgt (tech sergeant, just a rank) Scott, and the first day there he let me know what he thought of me.

The Sgts had us all wear chains around our necks with a key to our wall lockers on them. (Like a necklace.) You weren't allowed to *ever* take the chain off. We were told to unlock our lockers and stand up beside them. What they didn't tell you was that you had to take the lock off the locker and lock it back together; the key wouldn't come back out otherwise. I didn't get this, and so when TSgt Scott came by me, I was stuck to the bottom part of my locker with my key stuck in the lock.

"Ah, you there," he said as if he'd just found some kind of prized jewel, "I knew there was going to be at least one of you!" Most of the other guys had figured out what to do and were all standing at attention and in place. I wasn't. "What the **** made you decide to come here?!" I kept struggling with the key. "Can't get it out, can you?!" he asked.

I had to give my reporting statement before I answered and I was supposed to be standing at attention when talking to an NCO (a sergeant) but of course, I couldn't stand up.

He stared staight into me. "You're the stupid **** that's gonna get somebody killed, do you know that?" he screamed and little bits of spit landed all over me. "You're gonna be out there on that battlefield, and somebody's gonna be depending on you, and you're going to **** it all up, because you can't get a simple key out of a gd lock. What the **** made you think you could come here?!" He looked me up and down quickly..we didn't have our uniforms yet, so I was stuck in three day old clothes from home, torn jeans and a sweatshirt with the arms cut off. My head was shaved bald and the back of my scalp was bleeding because the barbers had cut off a mole normally hidden. My TI glared at me. "You look like you just escaped from a concentration camp."

Ah, TSgt Scott. I miss that man.

And that's how boot camp was. They completely tear you down. My TI had one of our guys, a 6 foot tall man, in tears once while we were out marching. 4 hours of sleep, constant drilling and marching, on and on and on. Day in, day out, this constant barrage of "you are useless, everything you do is a disaster, and all your efforts put everyone you know in danger." But after they do this, after they tear you down, they build you back up. They teach you what you need to know to accomplish what needs to be done. Their goal is to break you and to try to make a man out of you.

So for the purposes of this story, it must be known that boot camp changed who I was. It gave me confidence, the ability to look at a situation bigger than myself and calmly attack it senseless until it was gone, and overall, a standing and justification on my own, apart from everyone else's opinions of me.

My cousin Donald and my brother Michael flew out with my mom and my grandparents to visit me when I graduated. Donald and Michael had always bothered me when I was a kid. Everything they did seemed childish to me now. My mother came across as the most wild and unrestrained person I could imagine, and my grandmother I felt sorry for because she was such a simple woman. My granddad said he could tell I'd grown up, and he shook my hand and told me that I was now a man.

Everything I did was neat, trim, and in standards. My haircut was above my ears, tapered at the back, and did not touch my eybrows when groomed or protrude below the front band of properly worn headgear. My money was counted, put aside for my needs, and not wasted.

The day I left for my tech school, I bought a coca-cola, one of the few sodas I'd had in weeks. I finished it quietly and went back to the dorms, ready to leave.

...

 

[K9Guardian]

You got it easy at boot camp. I'd rather have someone else tear me down and build me up than have to do it myself.

 

[Kol]

Yes. I think all male citizens should have to serve at least 2 years in the military. It might whip them into shape, though some people just refuse to learn.

Anyhow.

Keesler.

After you finish basic training, you have to go to a school to learn your job assignment. I'd chosen my job before I signed up; Communications, Computer Systems Controller. Even now its painful for me to think about. The tech school was at a base named Keesler, in Biloxi, Mississippi.

This whole "Air Force" thing was important to me, and I was very proud of what I had done with my life, more so after my family had come to visit me at graduation. My granddad and my uncle had been in the Army, but I was going into something more than grunt work. I'd already been interviewed for the mandatory [Top Secret] clearance, and after I graduated from school, I would be stationed at Andrews in DC, there to work on Air Force One, the aircraft which carried the President of the United States.

I rode on the bus from the airport to the base and was extremely tired. A girl I met named Lazar let me fall asleep on her shoulder as we rode, and the next thing I knew, we were getting off the bus at Keesler.

We weren't met by Sergeants but other airmen, and they immediately told us we were "PINGERS", People In Need of Guidance, Education, Recreation, and Sex.

Keesler is a notoriously ungodly party base.

One of the mandatory briefings we were sent to was on health, and we were each handed a set of condoms and given a very long speech on the usual disease and hygeine issues. There were about four of us sitting and joking together, and we took an insane amount of condoms and stuffed them into Lazar's purse when she wasn't looking.

Because of the fact that so many of the airmen wound up pregnant at the school, the AF started a "phase" program, in which you gained more and more personal freedom the longer you had been at the school. P1D1 was "phase one, day one," and was the most restrictive. You had to wear your uniform even while off duty. You weren't allowed to leave the base, smoke in uniform, or stay out past 7pm. At two weeks, most of these restrictions were lifted, and the next two phases completely removed the need to wear a uniform outside of work and the curfew, respectively. Only the new guys were P1D1, and before I knew it our group was long past this, with more and more personal freedom.

Our squadron was the 322, the Bulls. Sergeants were assigned but stuck to the administrative details. They were friendly though firm, and although you saw them, most times it was when they left to go to lunch or home at the end of the day. Students ran the daily affairs completely, volunteers who handled 90% of the normal routine. There was a short class on leadership and marching, and afterwards you were given a special aguilette to wear across your shoulder which everyone called a "rope". There were Green Ropes, a few Yellow Ropes, and one Red Rope, who ran the shift. There were also Chapel Ropes, and this is what I volunteered to be.

I volunteered for a slew of different extra duties, and eventually became one of the airmen in charge of bringing new students onto the base. On Mondays, I picked up the new airmen. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I helped with the movie showing at the student chapel. In between I briefed those same new students on squad protocol, the phase program, and "accountability" (be accountable for your own actions). My own school lasted longer than the others in the squad, because most of my squad was "secretary school". There was an 8 to 1 ratio of females to males, and this was mostly due to the fact that the secretaries were all females.

Since it was difficult by design for guys and girls to find a place to be alone, a couple of the airmen would try to sneak out into town and get a motel room for a few hours. The motel clerks would usually call and report this, though, and so people would get busted. Doing so meant P1D1, and as Chapel Rope, I found this an excellent opportunity to share the gospel. On weekend mornings the first weekend students would have to do "weeds and seeds", trash detail for the squad. It wasn't in my normal duties, but since I was the squadron Chapel Rope, I would always wake up early to meet these people and talk with them about attending chapel services. To the people who were in trouble then, I preached the gospel. To the people who were just arriving, I preached the gospel. So in every way I could, I tried to learn personal skills, to prepare myself for Bible college..I still knew that I was meant to be a missionary evangelist.

And before I knew it, Christmas came around, and I was granted a 2-week leave to go back home.

 

[Kol]

Random deleted comment.

 

[Kol]

My granddad complained as we rode home because I'd started wearing cologne, and it made him sneeze. My brother was very quiet the entire ride, and so I told my granddad all about tech school and all the good I was doing there.

In the few months I'd been gone, I'd changed a lot. I'd gained over 30 pounds, coming from my meager 99 to slightly more than I weigh now. Because of training, I was in shape. I had all new clothes, a much cleaner haircut, and had learned to speak up so people could hear me. The moment I saw my sister Ashley, i ran over to her, picked her up, and swung her around the room. She screamed, then laughed and finally stumbled away dizzy. The moment Amanda came into the room I dropped to my knees and we hugged each other for at least a minute. I'd missed her more than anyone.

I stay at my mother's house one week and my grandparent's the next. Everyone acted differently around me, almost tense in a way. It was more respectful, I realized, because my aunts and uncles were now treating me like an adult.

As a kid my cousin Donald and my brother had shunned me, so I ended up hanging out and playing with my other cousins, who were all little girls. One of the first things I did was to check on my cousin Jennifer, who was only 10 or so at the time. I whispered to her that our granddaddy was getting her a bicycle for Christmas and it cheered her up. I told her a lot of my new stories and we watched cartoons together once or twice.

Which left my friends.

Jason was in awe of my new $600 trench coat, and kept going on to his mother about how he wanted the same. He'd started wearing all black, kinda going for a pre-goth thing I suppose, and a coat like mine would have completed the ensemble. My buddies decided one night they wanted pizza, and when I asked them how many, and told them I would pay for it, they looked at me like I was crazy. But I had $200 I'd planned to spend, with another grand in the bank otherwise.

After this visit, Jason and Andy both would sign up for the Air Force but neither one of them would make it. My cousin Donald tried to enlist in the Army but was discharged because of medical reasons.

One night I went over to Bird's house and his sister was there with her questionable friends. She didn't seem to remember me, and made a small flirt once or twice. I wouldn't have touched her for anything. Jason once again wanted to play Hol but I believe I rented anime instead. Jason's sister hung around for no good reason, and I ended up going home around 9.

The rest of my time I spent quietly at home.

So I had things together, and I made a big impression in how much I'd changed that year.

 

[K9Guardian]

Don't wworry, Dabid.... I won't aabandon you.

Did you still tell people they were PINGERS?

I think I will try that on a girl sometime. It might actually get me slapped.

 

[Kol]

My school called today to tell me everything's in order. I have to finish this!

I'm going to warn anyone reading this (2 regular posters and 60 daily viewers) that I'm going to have to get kind of graphic. I'm making a big claim with this story (let alone with the aliens, angels and demons) and I want to make everything that happened clear. It all ties in.

So. It was January of 1998, and I was going back to tech school in Mississippi...

 

[Kol]

When I came back to Keesler, I was in block 4 of my 10 block school. I had learned how to sauder, remove electronic and electrical components, patch telephone lines, and monitor communications systems for potential problems. I had been taught what ASCII was and how to count in binary and hex. I was scheduled to receive my first promotion only a few days after I graduated, from "airman basic" to just "airman", which was about $150 more a month.

I got tired of being a Chapel Rope, because of all the arguments between people at the student chapel. Instead I decided to go to leadership school, and become a Green Rope, which I did. I was then assigned the bulk of the squadron (335th, not the 322nd, which was from boot camp..my mistake earlier). I was given the Information Management and Personel flights..the secretaries. So in the mornings I had to hurry up and finish my breakfast, then rush out to meet the other student leaders and get everyone in formation so that we could march to school.

Normally I would have also had to monitor my dorm hallway, but I delegated this because the airman who was already in charge was doing a good job. We had to clean our own rooms and our hallway's shower room each morning, because the Sgts would routinely inspect. So I would check on my hallway monitor, double-check the hallway and shower for cleanliness, then take a few minutes to eat and talk with the other student leaders, until we all had to rush out to get ready for school.

By the time I got out of the chow hall everyone else was already outside, and I can remember putting on my vest (you had to wear a reflective vest) and hollering for the girls to get into formation. I would then check their uniforms to make sure no one was out of regulations; caps, polished boots, pressed uniforms. I would then put the flight at ease until the Red Rope gave the command to leave. Most mornings it was warm and we were allowed to roll up our sleeves. I would ask for help fixing my own and two random girls from my flight would come over to roll my sleeves up for me. I would ask if my uniform was okay, and I would always get a 'yes sir'.

I can still remember calling my flight to attention and giving the marching commands. It was a forward march, time to call cadence once (hut, two, three, four), then a column half-left as we turned off of the drill pad. This put everyone in a half-step...make sure the flight had completed the half-left, then give another forward march. It is indescribeable to have 50, 60 people all marching at your command. At the sound of your voice, they knew to turn left or right, and they did so in synch and in perfect formation. You called cadence, and their left heel hit that ground, in perfect unison.

So in the mornings, then, the 3 or 400 of us would all march to school, my voice booming out with all the others, in the middle of this air force base as aircraft landed, beacon lights lit the sky, and everyone went about their business. Everything was detailed and organized for me, I was happy with everything, and I had a job waiting for me in DC as soon as I graduated.

...

 

[Kol]

I remember the chaplains' names were DePinho and Roberts. Sometime in early February, they gathered up a few of the students and we took a trip to a nearby beach as a retreat.

In the mornings we would have prayer, then we would be teamed up and talk to each other about our relationship with God. The guy I talked with compared our time in the military to becoming a Christian. You had to learn everything over again, and to learn to do things the right way, he said. After lunch we met back up for Bible study, then we would each be given an hour to walk through the park area and spend time with God alone. At nights we would meet back up in the common room, something like a cabin, and fellowship with each other, reading verses that had been on our minds, sharing whatever the Spirit had led us to see that day, and building each other up in any way possible.

I had been given a Companion Bible (the best there is, but heavy with notes) as a HS graduation present, and I remember reading out of this at our Bible meetings. Chaplain DePinho taught me about the symbology of the Tabernacle and about the different OT offerings, while Chaplain Roberts called home to tell his wife and kids goodnight. Before bed we all headed out to the nearby beach for evening prayer, joining hands and thanking the Lord for our day together.

When I got back to Keesler a new group of students had arrived, and as usual I began their briefings that Monday. One of the new girls (how about Heather?) I immediately took to liking. She was from New Jersey and had an accent as bad as anything I'd ever heard. She said "wicked" instead of really, and it didn't make sense the first time I heard her say "wicked good". She was in school for information management, and I helped assign her room.

Although I didn't work there anymore, I still visited the student chapel on a regular basis, and I was surprised to meet this girl Heather there. She was doing volunteer work at the help desk, and I took the time to talk to her a bit. We must have talked for most of her shift there. Afterwards I asked her if she wanted to go somewhere and hang out.

The "club" on base was called the V, and although it was still daytime, we headed over there to just sit and chill a bit. Ordinarily I would have avoided the place, but since it wasn't night I didn't see a problem. So we sat and talked. Heather had lived her entire life in NJ, she didn't have a father, and her mother was her only friend. I had a coca-cola. She had everything mixed together. She had just graduated HS, realized the Air Force was a good choice for her, and had been through some pretty rough stuff as a kid. I thought I could relate, although my childhood was far distant to me at that point.

And so I began to date this girl Heather.