• downhomechunk@midwest.social
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    3 months ago

    My high school made everyone take the asvab. I must have scored well on it because the military was up my ass. I remember uniformed soldiers regularly ringing the bell and asking for me. I had zero interest in joining the armed services, but they kept coming. My mom started answering the door for me; yelling at them to get lost and leave us alone.

      • downhomechunk@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        Some additional context:

        This was 99-00. There was no war. Both of my grandparents served in ww2 and Korea to gain US citizenship. My dad came up in the Vietnam era when all his friends were getting drafted (aka forced to go to war). He tried to enlist but was blind in one eye, so they didn’t take him. My brother would have enlisted if it weren’t for a really bad skateboarding injury.

        If I were good at football, it would have been university coaches knocking on my door. I was good at something the military was interested in, so they tried to recruit me to enlist.

        I was 18 on 9/11/01. And my first thought was that Bush would take us to war, I’d get drafted and I needed to plan my escape to Canada. This was scarier than being recruited. I just wanted to play my bass guitar and smoke my marijuana in peace.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I didn’t take it and I still had guys showing up at my door, calling me, and in one case a Marine recruiter ran two blocks to talk to me.