Example, when I went through Boot Camp, in the Corps, in the old days (back in 78), it was way tougher and better than the easy ride the recruits have it these days. When I went through Boot we wore boots when we ran. Now recruits wear tennis shoes (to protect their widdle shins from shin-splints), and DI’s can’t punch them or kick them or call them bad names (it might give their widdle psyches bad self esteem). Blanket parties are a thing of the past and the notion of playing airplane in the pit (that’s the fun little game where ninety guys, after running six miles, climbing Mount Mother-*%#!@#, and doing benz-and-thrusts until we were swimming in our sweat, lay on our backs in a ten foot square of crushed sand so fine it’s lighter than helium and scoop handfuls of the powder in our sweaty fists, fly it over our mouths, or as the DI’s called them, our targets, and open the bomb-bay doors--our fists--dropping our bombs into our open pie-holes), would send the recruits crying to their therapists.

Of course when I brought this up to an even older Jarhead than me, (my Uncle Jake) who went to Boot Camp back in The day, according to him what I went through was nothing. Jake went to PI back in 63 and he called me a Hollywood Marine because I went to Pendleton. He laughed at my sunglasses and tittered when I mentioned Mount Mother-*%#!@#, (Mount Mother-*%#!@# was a thirty thousand foot Teton that went uphill both ways and the bane of all Hollywood…er… Camp Pendleton, Marines). Jake said, “what’s a little hike compared to sand fleas?” (sand fleas are the tiny meaner predecessors of the evil hornets in the Book of Revelation let loose from The Pit in The Last Days). They start out smaller than a grain of sand and have been charted to grow as large as a vampire bat on one feeding from a recruit standing at attention in the sun.

Jake said in his day they used real bullets in the obstacle course and they lost at least one man each time through. He said it with pride. I retorted with how we had a guy drown during water survival, so there! He laughed and said that in his day whole platoons were marched into the swamps to drown and the ones who made it were the only real men because real Marines can breath mud and fart dust. (I won’t tell you how he proved this last point except to say dust must not have smelled the same as it did in the old days).

I would have brought up some other stuff to show I was as tough as him except Jake was starting to get that strange little twitch to his eye and I suddenly had to go number one real bad.

Anyway, the reason I brought this all up was just to say that even though it seems like we writers have it harder than they did in the old days, it could be just a point of view thing.