Abe's Misadventures 0
Background
[ Index ]
[#0] [#1] [#2] [#3] [#4] [#5] [#6] [#7] [#8] [#9] [#10] [#11] [#12] [#13] [#14] [#15]
It is the mid-1980s, the economy is recovering from the painful early-1980s recession. It is a time of economic and military buildup, including the goal of a 600 ship Navy under the Ronald Reagan administration. They need all the warm bodies they can find to fill ships’ rosters. Recruiters are scrambling to fill quotas, taking in candidates that would have been passed over in leaner times. Special incentives are offered to attract young men and women who face high interest rates when considering student loans.
Abe Dykstra is one of the recruits landed by the Navy recruiter in his area. Cold calling during the early summer months, when most students were nearing registration for universities and scholarships, or still wondering what they were going to do and panicking. Dykstra was an easy mark. He didn’t have the attitude of someone with scholarship potential or wealthy parents to foot the university bills. It takes just four calls and three visits to get him to sign up for pre-enlistment at age seventeen. To his embarrassment Abe must call his mother to sign as well because he was a minor.
By sheer chance, Abe just completed a new high school course on basic electronics, its curriculum still being fleshed out. The easy class leads to overconfidence in the unscholarly student. When he comes across a job description in the special incentives offerings catalogue everything clicks. Electronics, maintenance work, and a salaried job with benefits. 'This is it,' he thinks.
A year later, as a fresh high school graduate, Abe still knew nothing of the world outside of the dry textbooks he barely glanced at and the rural town where he grew up. He elected enlistment over applying for college to escape—college requirements, minimum wage work, his past—a simple and clean cut, leaving everything behind. Long hair, sullen rebellious attitude, sex-drugs-and-rock‘n’roll.
His classmates were shocked, his parents smoldering with disappointment, Abe was low on people’s lists for who might join the military voluntarily. They were too close to see it was predictable. Abe’s temperamental thinking made him a perfect candidate to embrace an unexpected decision and follow through regardless of the hardships it may bring. The detached wisdom of the recruiter saw it instantly.
Stumbling through learning the ways of the world, Abe discovers it is simple to leave a place but fleeing a one’s past is many times more difficult.
[ Index ]
[#0] [#1] [#2] [#3] [#4] [#5] [#6] [#7] [#8] [#9] [#10] [#11] [#12] [#13] [#14] [#15]
I seem to remember signing up for the Army about that point in history for many of the same reasons.