MEPS: HOTEL

I was the only person on the shuttle to the hotel. I guess MEPS isn’t that busy at 1600. The bus driver proceeded to chat me up though he was a friendly guy, a Navy veteran actually.  After the short ten-minute ride to the hotel he got off the bus and gave me the tour of the hotel lobby and where the gym was and the restaurant and whatnot. Like I said a really friendly guy. I then was then brought to the second floor of the hotel to an office location where another veteran was in charge of signing us in and administering room keys and sticking you with that one weird individual whom you would be spending the night with.

They actually had quite a nice setup, a large flat screen television with a handful of DVD’s: The Hurt Locker, Guardian, Annapolis, Black Hawk Down, Jarhead, you get the idea. In addition to that they also had an Xbox for us to entertain ourselves with. So needless to say we had a way to entertain ourselves for quite a while. I arrived and was given my room key right after another individual as well who turned out to be my roommate that night. He was a pretty decent guy. He wanted to go into Aircraft Maintenance in the Air Force and qualified just well enough on his ASVAB.

My roommate and I after checking in decided to go drop our bags off in our room and then hit up the hotel restaurant with our dinner vouchers we were given. The food wasn’t bad either. I mean it was a buffet so I wasn’t complaining. Put a buffet in front of a guy who does nothing but run, swim, and lift everyday, yeah I won’t complain about a buffet. I carb-loaded good that night.

As my new friend and I sat stuffing our faces and getting in one word of conversation every other bite I noticed another DEP guy who had made his way downstairs for dinner. He was alone and proceeded to sit a table in the corner by himself after filling up his plate, so I promptly waved him over and had him join my roommate and I. If there is one thing I have learned it is that being timid never pays off. Granted most of these kids are still in high school and haven’t completely matured yet but I’ve put that timid phase behind me. Granted the occasional pretty girl will leave me feeling like a schoolboy from time to time, but that is a different thing entirely.

So thus our gang grew from two to three. Our third was trying to join the Army infantry but apparently had a decent sized wait ahead of him as the training was actually backed up and a waiting list was in effect. According to him every Army infantry member must go through jump training, and I guess they only have oh so many slots, hence the waiting list. But he was a cool enough kid.

After dinner we found ourselves back upstairs in the DEP lounge (as we came to call it), playing Xbox for several hours. We picked up a couple more kids in our “clique” one I believe was going into the Army for who knows what and the other wanted to join the Air Force and said he was thinking about Pararescue. Immediately I became intrigued and started sizing this guy up. We talked about the rigors of training and I asked him what he had been doing to train.

“Nothing really,” he replied. “I mean I swam in high school and I life guard part-time. I’ve always been a really good swimmer.”

“Oh well that’s good at least you have the swimming covered then. I struggle with it,” I confessed. “It’s definitely my weak point. But you know you really should start incorporating some amount of calisthenics and cardio into your day-to-day routine.”

“Yeah I know,” he replied as he than began to change the subject.

Not five minutes later did he turn to me and ask, “Anyone want to step outside for a smoke?”

I about died. This kid was a scrub. I’m sorry but if you truly want to dedicate yourself to something as rigorous as Pararescue or anything as intense and Special Forces related you can’t be doing that no way. After returning from his smoke he proceeded to pull out a can of chew and put in a lip. Disgusting. But hey, “to each his own.”

The night went on rather slowly as we played more video games, talked to the other DEP candidates, and watched a movie. I think all in all there were a total of 4 Air Force candidates, 2 for the NAVY, 7 for the ARMY, and 1 for the Marines. Slowly but surely the night went on and we were reminded that the bus left at 0530 and breakfast started at 0500. If you wanted time to eat you had best wake up in time to get a full meal because it was going to be a long day at MEPS.

So sure enough people began dragging themselves off to their rooms to fall asleep and rest for the long day ahead. As I lay in bed I made sure to set my phone with five different alarms to ensure I woke up the next morning. And somehow throughout the course of the evening everyone asked me if I could bang down their door in the morning, to make sure that they too woke up.

Unfortunately, I seemed to have the one roommate with insomnia. We stayed up a little bit watching television, Family Guy to be exact (Giggity), and he made idle remarks and comments about how he thought he was going to just stay up the whole night.

“Oh boy!” I thought. “Please don’t.”

Eventually I managed to get to sleep despite the occasional stir from his laughter. At one point I even woke up and found him asleep with the remote clutched in his hand as the flicker and glow of the television lit up the room. I didn’t hesitate a bit in turning it off and falling right back asleep only to be woken up an hour later to him watching more television. It was 0300. My alarm was set for 0430.

Seriously!?