You Say 'How High?'

I happened across something the other day that one of my training instructors, Air Force Staff Sergeant G-----y, would have really enjoyed. 

Not sure if it would have pleased him as much as fucking with me while we were both in Air Force Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, the largest US airbase in the world without a runway (he as a leader and I as part of the led), but I took solace in the realization that none of it was personal and all of it was designed to build character. 

Well, that's what I told myself, but I am a notorious liar. Cannot adequately express, forty-six years after it kept happening, how much I enjoyed him sticking the brim of his Smokey the Bear TI hat under the bill of my fatigue cap while staring into my eyes and yelling into my face, "Air MAN! When I say jump, you say 'how high?' Are we clear, college boy?" 

We were. And yet, there's this. 

Proving yet again, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Indeed.
-bill kenny