So I signed the dotted line....4 years of active duty, guaranteed avionics school...woooohooooo I'm going to be a real Marine. That was about the 13th of August, 1969...problem was with the war going on, there was no room in bootcamp for me so I had to wait 90 days...during that timeframe, I was kinda silly, drank a lot, partied and such. I went to a sorta rural highschool and I guess you could say most of my friends were rednecks. I guess that made me one too....dunno....about a month before I was supposed to leave for bootcamp, I was out for a particularlly heavy night of drinking when a friend a couple of years older than I and freshly back from Viet Nam hatched a plan to keep me from going into the service. Very simply if he beat the crap out of me, they wouldn't take me. Not a bright plan, but...so after about 2 hours of a drunken brawl, our other 'good' friends just left us on the side the road to slug it out. Well, here comes the county Sherrif' amd he don't like what he sees. I just got in the back of the squad car as told, but my friend decided he'd kick some of their butt. Oooooo bad move. Long story short, we spent most of the night in jail after he got out of the ER and I still went to bootcamp the following week. Bootcamp......Marine Corp bootcamp.......