I’ll be back with you double-time quick

Years ago, I wrote a memoir about my Army basic training in the fall of 1971 and how scared I was.

Scared because the military was new and I hate new. Scared because I had never fired a gun. Scared because the Army is all about bivouacs and cooties and going to bed filthy and I require a minimum of two showers a day. Scared because I don’t like being told what to do. Scared because I had just completed four years of free and easy college life, and now I was darkening down a path that would be the polar opposite.

A part of me actually believed I would certainly be maimed, if not killed, because in my nervousness and fear I would do something to offend the Defense Department.

I kept a diary because a part of me actually believed I should chronicle details of my demise since the Army certainly wouldn’t.

In 2016, I found out I have Asperger’s. As I learn more about it, it’s easy to understand why I was so worked up about basic training.

No common sense. No social skills. No ability to fit in. Not exactly a blueprint for success.

While I got to the end, it was anything but easy. The stress was almost unbearable. The other guys could wink at each other when the DI threatened to throw the entire lot of us into the stockade. I took the words at face value. I could just barely handle the barracks. If they locked me up, they wouldn’t have to kill me. I’d do the job for them.

I didn’t know I was on the spectrum. I had never even heard the words. I just knew I was terrified.

These days the United States has an all-volunteer military. Men and women with autism serve only if they want to.

That wasn’t the case in 1971. I had a low lottery number from the nationwide draft which meant the armed services required my presence.

I’m going to revisit (and rewrite) my Army memoir for a series of blog posts. Each will be the length of a book chapter. I won’t be finished with the entire project until mid-November, if then, but for tease purposes I’ll share one post before then. Bottom line: You won’t be reading my stuff for a while.

Why am I doing this?

I’m bragging, but I think this basic training memoir contains some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever written. Fear indeed does begat humor. It’s devilishly delicious to look back at my Fort Leonard Wood experience secure in the knowledge that I survived.

But mostly it’s because I want to do my part to help folks better understand Asperger’s.

Here I am at the grenade range afraid I’ll drop the thing and be scattered throughout the Missouri countryside. Here I am being tear-gassed. Here I am being screamed at for having a dirty rifle.

I plan on keeping a good bit of the original text plus a few entries straight from the diary.

And I want to add material from the lens of my newly minted Aspie awareness that helps explain why I was so scared and why I was convinced only the worst would happen.

I promise to proceed on this assignment double-time quick.

Until then, I salute you.