My First Time

I got an email from my sister Karen last night concerning my last post. In it, she recalled the first time I got poison ivy when I was I child. Thankfully, I don't remember the details, but according to her, I got it when we (not me personally, since I mush have been around 5 at the time) were burning weeds in the back yard and I got what she termed as "smoked." She said that I got it all over, including my eyelids, scalp, armpits, etc., and hand to lie on the couch for several days under a sheet with calamine lotion smeared all over me.

I sorta remember it, but not the part about the couch. I do remember that this was about the time I went from being one of the skinny kids around the house to one of the not so skinny (think of Lance Berkman, aka "fat elvis") from all the cortisone shots and subsequent appetite. I guess I've never really been fat, but other than some of my time in the Corps, especially after I got mono in boot camp, I've never been thought of as skinny either.

I dropped out of A&M after the Fall 1979 semester and went up to Lake Placid for the Olympics. I ended up volunteering at the Bob and Luge, and due to my friend Bud Avakian (hope I spelled that right -- haven't seen him since), got to seem all the USA hockey games, including the last 3/4 of the USA-USSR game. Although we both worked at the Olympics, me at the Bob and Luge as I've mentioned, and him at the Cross Country venue, we didn't have tickets and had to sneak in to all the games. The first one was easy because we got "crowd control" cards signed by my boss Joe Pete Wilson, but after that, they got more difficult, and it was almost impossible to get into the USA-USSR game. The only thing that saved us was an LPOOC member who persuaded the girl operating the elevator to let us on. Once we were in, we were in.

So, after the games were over, Karen bought me a bus ticket and I came back home. I had been persona non grata at home when I'd left, but I guess the way I "helped" the USA beat the USSR got me off the list and I was allowed to enter the house again (I think I was officially kicked out only about 3 or 4 times: once when I was 16, once just after New Years right before the Olympics -- which turned out really well, thanks! -- and again on Christmas Eve 1988 -- which also turned out well, since I was broke and ended up moving to Houston and getting a job with one the of the top law firms in town, Baker and Botts, so thanks again!)

I got back around spring break and went to visit Nancy on the other side of Houston. We hung out for a couple days and on one afternoon took a bike ride around the neighborhood; She lived in a nice area off I-10 and Gessner. It was a beautiful day and we ended up at Memorial City Mall, which was only a few blocks from her house. She may have been showing me where she worked on school breaks. Anyway, as we rode through the parking lot, I saw the sign for the Marine Corps Recruiter and asked her if she'd mind if I went in to talk to them, since I'd been considering joining. I mainly just wanted to talk about officer programs, but after about an hour, Nancy called her mom and told her I'd enlisted. The USA-USSR game had been on 22 February 1980, and I arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego on 20 March 1980, less than a month later.

Everything was going pretty well, but about the time we were getting ready to go North to Camp Pendleton for infantry training and rifle range qualification, I started getting sick, and the the first long run after our arrival, fell out for the first time in my life. Whenever you fail to do something in boot camp, they normally PT the hell out of you -- there are no prizes for second place in the Corps -- but when the assistant DI asked me why I fell out, I pointed to my swollen neck and whispered I was sick; I had to whisper because at that point I could no longer talk. They placed me on bed rest, but when I didn't get any better after several days, they sent me to the hospital.

When I joined the Corps, I think I weighed about 160-165 pounds, but by the time I got the the hospital, I was only around 145. They said I had mono, so I stayed in the hospital for about a week, and was then sent to a convalescence platoon in San Diego. I was supposed to stay there for a few weeks, but since I was a reservist and wanted to complete my training by the time school started back up in the Fall, I requested to go back to training as soon as possible and missed just over 2 weeks. Unfortunately, that was just a bit too long, so I wasn't allowed to rejoin my original platoon and got stuck in another one.