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Just when I thought my life couldn't get any crazier...
I found myself making mud angels on a soccer field in the rain at 9:30 on a Tuesday night while others chanted above me: "This is the way we wash the pledges, wash the pledges. This is the way we wash the pledges, all night long."
It was the first semester of my freshman year at college and I had joined the Army ROTC program as suggested by my dad. Pledging for Perishing Rifles, a co-ed ROTC fraternity, had been the idea of a fellow ROTC freshman. It's only eight weeks, he had said, and we'd be Actives (members of the fraternity) before we knew it. Little did I know what I was about to get myself into...
The craziness had begun long before making mud angels. I was seventeen years old in a new state where I knew absolutely no one with 19 hours of college courses (biology major with a chemistry minor) plus an on-campus job. The over-achiever attitude I had in high school had carried over into college and I saw no problem pledging a fraternity on top of everything else.
8 weeks, no sweat! Only there was a lot of sweating. In the form of at least two extra PT sessions (physical training) a week at odd hours of the day on top of the regular 3 times a week ROTC PT times. We ran three miles at 4 in the afternoon, dozens of push-ups at 9 at night, half an hour's worth of stair climbing at the basketball arena at 5 in the morning.
It didn't stop at physical work. I had to learn all 32 Active's names and ranks and greet them whenever I saw them on or off campus. I memorized nomenclatures of weapons I would never fire and spout them out whenever commanded. I was drilled to assemble a M16 in less than a minute. Since the Perishing Rifle members were also the college's Color Guard, the other pledges and I were taught precision drill maneuvers with 9 pound Springfield M-1 rifles. Imagine standing at attention holding one of those in your right arm seemingly forever while an Active measures the centimeter space between the toe end of your boots.
And then there was the silly stuff like the mud angel incident. We were required to always carry a blue binder containing all our Perishing Rifle information, visible at all times. You did not want to be caught without it, trust me. I slept with mine. A fellow pledge (the same one that got me into this mess) and I once had to make a midnight run to a 24 hour grocery store to buy all eleven pledges a can of lemon scented Pledge furniture polish on the whim of an Active. We threw a Halloween party for the Actives, we made a music video (oh boy, do I wish I had a copy of that!), we played cheerleaders at the Actives' football games, and we serenaded them on their birthdays. All this on top of keeping a 3.0 or better grade point average with shiny boots and pressed uniforms. Unless you wanted to hear: "Front leaning rest position! Exercise!"
And then came Initiation Week. But if I told you about that, I'd have to kill you. *winks*
Pledging the fraternity was one of the craziest times of my life but also one of the most rewarding. I'll never forget the feeling of pushing cold clammy mud aside with my hands as the rain poured down on my face and soaked my uniform. But just like the shower afterwards was pure bliss, the sense of accomplishment after all the madness of pledge period was worth every "Yes, sir!"
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