Piggies: A Preview

Chapter 10 from "Tad's Happy Funtime"

Thirty years ago, I was a Korean student at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I met the love of my life, proposed to her (on Valentine’s Day!) and married her (on St. Patrick’s Day!), and started our family.

Ten years ago, I published my book, “Tad’s Happy Funtime” which includes stories about growing up in suburban Phoenix, experiencing DLI, and raising our family. This story is from that middle section.

Piggies

Upon her arrival in California, Lieutenant Colonel Harriet J. Gallegos set out to make things better in her new command. She met with her staff, and received orders from the wing commander, and contemplated all of the things that needed to change. Her predecessor had been a friend to the airmen in his squadron, but that clearly was not a good approach, as discipline and good order were needed to stamp out the rampant smoking, drinking, and sexual escapades of her student body. Everywhere she looked there examples of lax standards, loose morals, and evidence that these Generation X slackers needed her guiding hand in their lives.

But before getting down to the business of implementing her program, she took a trip with her family to Santa Cruz and spent the day on their famous boardwalk. They rode rides and played carnival games, and she won a great, spherical, pink plush pig—which gave her a wonderful, horrible, awful idea.

My lovely bride, Kate, and I had already come to the attention of "Aunt Harry," and not in the best way. There had been a number of people lined up outside the commander's door for punishment after my infamous bachelor party, for one. And then, on the very day of our wedding, a Friday afternoon normally reserved for a 30-minute commander's call between the wings, our 700-member squadron was split into male and female groups and led to separate showings of a 20-minute abstinence training video. We sat quietly through the program, and when it was over, TSgt Knight asked if we had any questions.

"Yeah, sir," I said, "will you be sending a student leader to enforce this while I'm on my honeymoon?"

No. The answer was no.

The commander had a number of bad ideas. One of my favorites lasted fewer than three weeks: the Student Chaplain program. There are a lot of things about an airman's daily life that are up to commander's discretion in the rule book. Lt Col Gallegos used her discretion to ban smoking on the Presidio, but quickly learned that the post commandant, a grouchy Army colonel, happened to be a prolific smoker, and she was reminded (with several full-throated vodka- and Marlboro-scented obscenities) that it was not within her power to ban smoking on his post. So it became part of the student leaders' duties to enforce a no-smoking rule among the airmen. They were also the enforcers of tighter rules about drinking (no alcohol from Sunday night through Friday afternoons), monitors of travel (no leaving a 50-mile radius of DLI without approved leave forms), and local area activities (no one was allowed to rent a hotel room within 50 miles of DLI).

After a very brief time under this new regime, tempers became frayed and incidents of bad behavior began popping up with alarming frequency. The Student Chaplain program was something the commander thought of while reading (what else) Chicken Soup for the Soul. She laid out her vision of "students helping each other with their spiritual needs," and asked for volunteers at one of her Friday commander's calls. These spiritual leaders would wear a white rope and be considered student leaders.

By the next Friday, she had five volunteers: a Muslim Arabic student, two Mormons, a Wiccan, and a Buddhist. She reminded everyone that morale was low and improving each other's spiritual fitness was a good way to help raise it. By the Friday after that, the commander, who was a Roman Catholic, canceled the program, saying tersely that no one had taken her idea seriously.

Kate was horribly allergic to cigarette smoke, and was under 21, so my drinking and smoking were naturally being curbed anyway; and as a married couple, we applied to be moved onto F Flight. We received a modest three-bedroom house on Fort Ord. This eliminated our need to find accommodations that subverted the commander's de facto abstinence encouragement plan. Besides, setting up house together was such a blast, we didn't have much time for partying.

One thing we had done for a while was volunteer as PT monitors. Every day after school, we would change into running gear and meet up with A Flight—remember, they were the Phase One airmen, and they were required to run for their mandatory PT. We were on Phase Four, which meant we could manage our own exercise program, but we decided that it would be easier to maintain our practice if we ran on the same schedule as the newer folks.

The downside of being a PT monitor was that when we had new people fresh from Basic Training in the formation, they weren't used to running on Monterey's steep hills, and whenever those people fell out of formation with cramps or other issues, it was the job of a PT monitor to stay with them and make sure they made it back to the squadron safely. Unfortunately for me, this usually meant that instead of running the two miles, I was walking next to someone who didn't know what shin splints felt like, telling them to keep breathing and stop crying.

This, combined with my sedentary days in the classroom, meant that I was putting on a little weight. Strangely, Kate was too, even though she had an incredibly high metabolism and had been eating less since moving out to Fort Ord, probably due to the stress of getting to school on time upsetting her stomach in the morning.

"I don't like this," she would say, dressing in the morning. "My boobs are getting squashy." I never complained about that.

But, as I was contemplating other PT options I realized that Fort Ord was an easy bike ride from the Presidio, and with a convenient bike path leading from the bottom of Private Bolio Road where it intersected with Lighthouse Avenue all the way through Seaside, I decided to resign as a PT monitor, buy a bicycle, and make that 40-minute journey twice a day.

That's when the commander announced her pig idea.

"Good morning, squadron!" she crowed at us, holding the ridiculous pink toy under her arm. It clashed horribly with the Air Force blue of her uniform. "I've been noticing that morale is low, and some of you airmen are starting to look like little piggies!"

We braced ourselves for the worst. Last time she had mentioned low morale, one of our less popular airmen had pointed out that there were plaques in Commander's Hallway celebrating past Drill Competitions, and we had subsequently been required to show up for marching practice at 0700 on Saturday mornings. The airman in question had, naturally, washed out of her Vietnamese course and departed for another training school, so I'm sure the early drill practice improved her morale immensely.

"Since not enough of you are doing your own PT, I'm going to institute a weekly squadron run," the commander continued, as our peers from the other branches of service casually slowed their pace to hear every word. "Each Monday, you will all gather by flights, and we'll run the circuit around the whole post. That's just under two miles, all the way down the hill and all the way back up! As you run, we'll sing cadence, and throw this pig!" She brandished the pig over her head triumphantly as the horde of giggling Navy, Army, and Marine eavesdroppers scattered to tell their comrades what the Air Force was up to this week.

"If anyone drops the pig, we'll have to go around again, so look sharp, everyone!"

Kate and I went that weekend and bought bikes. On Monday, I let the flight commander running the PT monitor program know that I wouldn't be joining them the rest of the week. I had to assure her that I wasn't quitting because of the pig, and since we were all required to be there that afternoon, I would help out with my normal duties on these Monday runs.

It was a brilliant, rare sunny day, but the 700 faces assembled in their drab running gear looked miserable. We were spread out, doing stretches and some calisthenics while watching the double doors leading from Commander's Hallway. And then she appeared, the pig tucked under her arm, striding with her odd smile to the front of the formation.

We formed up. We snapped to when called to attention. We marked time, then began double time. The enormous, shuffling mass lurched around the corner and onto the road.

And the pig soared high into the air.

The first few people held onto the pig before launching it into the sky again, but then others began flinging it straight back, and it practically rolled across several hundred hands to the end of the line, like Eddie Vedder crowd-surfing at a Pearl Jam concert. Once at the back, someone was tapped to sprint to the front again with the pink monstrosity and begin the process anew.

As we ran, all of the other services turned out along the road to watch us go by. The commander acted as though they were cheering us, as if our squadron had returned from the front after licking Hitler, instead of jeering at a bunch of losers whose commander thought they were too fat to deserve dignity.

There was one close moment when someone fumbled, and we thought the pig was going to touch the ground. It may have, actually, but everyone denied that the black foot-shaped smudge was the result of an angry stomp, and the commander didn't press the issue. So, humiliated and sweaty, we returned to our starting point, and dispersed to our quarters to wash, change, and prepare to face the rest of the U.S. military at dinner. Hopefully there wouldn't be pork on the menu.

That week, I began my regimen of biking to school. The ride was amazing. I had the perfect riding mix (Dave Matthews Band, Spin Doctors, and Blues Traveler) on the Walkman, and whether I was going to school or back home, the trip started with a thrilling downhill half mile, followed by a peaceful beach cruise, and a half mile uphill workout.

Poor Kate seemed to be having a harder time with her stomach, and it was hard to say whether the stress of her Arabic class was affecting her, or whether the nausea and occasional dizziness was affecting her work. Either way, her grades were slipping, and she was not happy. When she hadn't improved over the weekend, she finally agreed to visit the clinic—conveniently for her on Monday afternoon.

The Squadron Run started out about the same as the first one had, except the overcast sky did a better job of reflecting the mood of the squadron. There seemed to be a lot more spectators lined up on the road this week, and the commander beamed proudly as she strutted to the head of the column.

But this time, just as we got to the road, a small squad of Marines, carrying their platoon's guidon (the pole that every military unit uses to display ribbons and honors), charged from between the Marine and Navy buildings and plunged into the middle of our formation. They speared the pig, which was in mid-fling, on the chrome spear-point of their guidon, grunted a bellowing shout of "HOO-AH!" and barreled out of sight down the hill before any of the airmen thought to stop running.

"Get them!" shrieked the commander. "Get that pig back, now!"

The crowd had shuffled to a halt and was milling about in a mix of mirth and befuddlement. A couple of people trotted off to follow the Marines half-heartedly, but by now it was apparent that no one was sad to see the pig go.

Well, one person was. Lt Col Gallegos stood weeping in the road and staring around at our blank, unhelpful faces, as it dawned on her that we would have been happy to let the Marines carry her off, speared on their guidon. She stalked back to her office without another word.

Kate met up with us as we returned, and in retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised by what she had to say. It made me forget about pigs, unhappy commanders, and intrusive student leader programs. All of the symptoms were there, and the timing was right, but it took a trip to the clinic for the truth to occur to either of us.

"Tad," she said, "I'm gonna be a momma!"

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