Cleared

Tuesday was finally the dreaded physical for my enlistment. By way of clarification, everyone seems confused by this, and believes that I'm talking about the part where I have to do a bunch of sit-ups, push-ups, and running. Negative. This is the part where they look you over and decide whether or not you're in good enough health to even attempt to run and do those push-ups and sit-ups.

I had to show up at meps (military entrance processing station) in Salt Lake at 6am. The first thing they did is take my blood pressure. I was feeling really nervous about this whole thing, but the poor guy in there getting his blood pressure taken at the same time made me look cool as a cucumber. They took his at least three times and finally made some notations in his file and said they'd try again one last time before he leaves. They sent us on to the vision station.

At the vision station a sort of grumpy old man made me step up to the machine with the little chart in it. Okay, no big deal, I've done this before...but I swear those letters in there were miniscule! For a second I just stared at them and said nothing, until the old man barked at me to get started. The guy moved the letters around while alternatively blacking out one of my eyes. They also tested me for color blindness. I passed vision without a problem and was then directed into a room with all the other recruits to fill out papers about my medical history.

They wanted to know absurd things like, how old was I when I got chicken pox. I don't know, but I guessed 5. The paperwork felt like it took hours, but it was probably only 45 minutes or so. Afterwards I was shuttled over to the hearing station. They stuck me in a little booth, had me put headphones on, and hold a little clicker in my hand. I was supposed to hit the clicker evertime I heard a beep. I truthfully found the whole test to be a bit confusing because at times I couldn't decide if I was actually hearing a beep, or if the beep was just in my head. Regardless, it turns out I have some hearing loss. They tested me three times, before announcing that my hearing loss is not severe enough to warrant any sort of a waiver. I was then moved along to the blood station.

They took a single vial of blood, and then placed this tiny little kiddy sized bandage on my arm. I only made it to the door before the bandaid popped loose and blood started spurting all over my arm and onto their floor. I imagine those blood people weren't my biggest fans. They had to hustle me back into my seat and then strapped on a bandage that I felt was unnecessarily large. Next I had to go down a hall and interview with a Dr.

The Dr. asked questions about any tattoos, brandings, body piercings, and illegal drug use. He wanted to know if I'd ever been arrested. I sailed through that, since I apparently have led a very boring life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I wish that it were otherwise, but when at the end the Dr. responded that most people have to say "yes" to at least one of those questions I did feel a bit dull.

After the interview the men and women were split up. Myself and the three other ladies got escorted into a room where we were asked to strip down to our underwear. They weighed us, and then measured our height. Then the Dr. came in and we were asked to stand in a line while he checked our ears, eyes, and throats. After that he asked us to spread out and conducted us through a series of odd stretches and exercises, including the infamous duck walk. Jared asked me later if it was creepy prancing around in my underwears in front of some Dr. who was just sitting back watching, but trust me when I say that the military has really mastered the ability to make you feel like livestock. Nothing about this experience feels at all personal. After that we did a brief visit to a private room with the Dr. and a nurse for a more personal inspection, and then off to urinalysis.

The nurse lady has to stand there and observe you giving the urine sample. They intentionally leave that for the last station, and by the time you get there it's been at least 4 hours. One of the other ladies was only 17 though, and came down with a little case of stage fright. I felt bad for her, I'm sure having the nurse staring her down in the stall was bad enough, but then having three other people all standing around waiting didn't do much to help. Either way, she eventually completed the task and we were moved along for a final interview with the Dr.

I had this overwhelming fear that I'd get into the last interview and the Dr. would suddenly announce that they had noticed that I have some horrible disqualifying condition...or say that they noticed my back is way too crooked and I'm done. I know the Dr. noticed, he was watching me like a hawk during the underwear routine, but never said a word other than to ask if he could take a closer look at my lower back. All my worries were for nothing. The last Dr. sat me down, reviewed through all the results, announced that I was cleared for service, and asked me to go check out at the front desk.

I called my recruiter who was very enthusiastic about my passing the physical and announced that my last step is to decide what foreign language I want to learn. Once I decide that he'll find me a spot, give me a date for when I'll ship to basic training, and have me sworn in.

Now for the hard part. I thought deciding for sure whether or not I really wanted to do this was hard. Wrong. Turns out deciding which language I want to learn is going to be the hard part. I wanted to learn Spanish, but I sort of shot myself in the foot by scoring high enough on the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) that I am eligible to learn any language. So now they don't want to teach me Spanish or any of the category I languages (Italian, French, etc..), because they want me to learn Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, or Korean. Farsi is the only one I'm considering from that category, also thinking about Russian, but really I don't have a clue which one to choose...I just have this one last thing to figure out. At least this gives me more time to stall before I have to start turning into a runner in preparation for the PT test. Have a mentioned how much I hate to run? I have to buy running shoes, and I haven't the faintest idea what one looks for in a good running shoe.