Am I a real soldier yet?

It's funny that at every stage of your military career you have people telling you that you're not a real soldier yet because you haven't done something or other. It just makes me wonder if some soldiers sit there and ask, "Am I a real soldier now? No. How about now? No. Okay, I've been through one deployment, how about now?"

My buddies from my class and I have decided to take it upon ourselves to reinvent the "Love Me" book. For those of you who don't know, your Love Me book is all of your important military documents all in one folder or portfolio. Kind of like a photographers portfolio. It contains all your awards and decorations, all of your training paperwork saying that you have indeed completed basic training and AIT (and yes, you are indeed a soldier). But we decided to put a little X-ray tradition into it and made them a little more entertaining. Well, a whole lot of gay is what they are. Extremely gay in my case.

Now, we are doing this all for fun, and of course certain people just can't seem to see fun and humor for what it is. A bunch of H Company guys were behind us in the DFAC line (H Company are prior service guys or guys that are reclassing into a new MOS) and one of them asked me what was with the pink folders. Now, I understand that they have probably been deployed sometime in the last year or two, but I told him that the reason was because they were super gay. He proceeds to tell his buddies, "Oh yeah, it's the new Army, hugs and high fives." Hardy har har moron.

If you can't see humor in toting around out processing paperwork in a pink polka-dotted portfolio with Hello Kitty and Pokemon stickers all over it, while in uniform...you should probably get a new job because you are going to end up freaking out in combat and shooting yourself in the face. I'm just saying.

I'll just say that it will be nice once I'm out of TRADOC, I'll be qualified in and MOS, and whatever I decide to do I'm sure I'll be deployed sometime in the near future. Too bad I'll probably never see that assclown ever again.

The main thing is that it is July 31 and we graduate on August 12. Only one more week of school and a week of out processing and grad practice. Then it is homeward bound for the X-rays.