A Tale To Tell: Update
Here’s an update…
So here I am in Halifax, doing team training so important that they fly 37 people across the country to do, and they decide to schedule me in for another fitness test. I get there and do almost exactly what I did before, except the people on this coast were a lot nicer. I quit the running portion right away, as I normally do, and the guy looks at me funny. I say, “I’m getting out, what do I care for?” He laughs and says “Fair enough. Let’s do the rest of your test while these people are running.” So while everyone else was running, I did the rest of the test. He asks “should I put zero and zero for your push-ups and sit-ups?” I say, “no, I’ll do at least 5 and 5.” After my 5th pushup, I push myself up to stand up and he says “ooooh, 6 pushups!” and we both laugh, then he goes “Don’t bother with the sit-ups, I’ll just write down 5 and you can continue on with your day.”
Afterwards, realizing that I can still make it to work before the start of training (which started late that day), I raced to my room, got into uniform, and headed over to work. I made it 10 min. before the start.
At lunch that day I sat down with one of my co-workers, Brian, and some other people sat down asking me how the test went. I laughed and Brian says to them, “He probably put more effort into getting back to work than he did on the whole test.” I laughed harder because it was true, and then explained the whole story to him.
The rest of the week went off without a hitch thanks in some part to my performance all week. We passed our assessments on Thursday (a day early) with very high marks, and of course, went out to celebrate out success. At the bar, my boss comes up to me and says, “Shop talk for 1 min. Do you want to come to the gulf?” (And yes, that’s the Persian Gulf) I think about it for a second and say “yeah, sure.” Why did I say that? Well no matter how I feel about the military and the whole system in general, I’m a professional and a patriot and I do want to contribute as much as I can before I get out. So he says to me, “Well I’m going to see if I can’t make something happen, because without filling your head too much, we want you, the ship wants you, you’re the smartest guy we have.”
Well my head can barely fit through a door now and I’ve been given a couple of nicknames, Google Ops (because I seem to know everything), and Hot Mike (but that’s a story for another time)
