The Secret Sign - Hand-made Collage

Reading about the new expanded and remarkably inclusive enlistment requirements for the U.S. Military, I decided to join up. This may strike my peers as a rash decision. After all I enjoy a comfortable middle class, middle aged life. Still, call it my mid-life/Mid-East crisis, a craving for adventure, or maybe just a hankering for an authentic falafel, Bagdad exerts a strange pull on me. Only time will tell if I actually make it there.

For now, I am doing Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood in Texas. My fellow enlistees are a diverse group. Aside from your run-of-the-mill convicted criminals and assorted low intelligence types are a group of fabulous out-of-work Broadway hoofers. In today's liberal Army, this group has expanded the current policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Until the First Round of Cosmopolitans Are Served." They are a fun and outrageous group given to bursting into Rodgers & Hart songs on a whim. They have transformed what would otherwise be a mindnumbing routine of exercise and arms training into a wild camp camp if you will. Perhaps my favorite of their rituals is their use of a secret sign to show their affiliation. Why they insist on its use in such an open army is a mystery to me. Though I must say it certainly makes army life colorful and grand.