The Purple Hand

So, this Army thing. My fears are realized and my daughter has already been injured. But perhaps a little backstory.

When you go to basic training, you don't actually start basic training right when you get there. The first week is called reception, where you are not in the actual barracks, but in some sort of holding place. In Danni's case, a hall with about 50 girls and bunk beds and lockers.

So you spend reception week getting your uniforms, seeing the doctor and dentist, getting immunizations (you know, whether you had them as a kid or not, I guess you get to have them all again) and getting paperwork in order. I'm not sure how this takes a week, but whatever.

When you're in basic training, every night, 7 or so people (or however long they sleep) have to do an hour of "guard duty." What they are protecting, I don't know. But what I'm saying is on certain nights, you have to wake up in the middle of the night and stand guard for an hour, then go back to bed.

In reception, I suppose they are preparing you for this when they do the same thing, except instead of guard duty, you're just watching the reception desk. In the middle of the night. To make sure it doesn't escape, or something.

Danni arrived at Fort Sill on Wednesday the 16th. On Thursday night, sometime in the middle of the night, she had her turn at holding down the fort. Oh, I slay me. Get it, fort? Sill?

She also managed to get herself a top bunk, not by choice. Apparently, there are no ladders or anything, you just jump down and climb up.

Now, the week before she left, she didn't get much sleep. She was nervous and scared and jittery. So I'm blaming exhaustion on the fact that my daughter, getting up to watch the reception desk in the middle of the night, fell out of her top bunk. Onto a concrete floor. She landed on her butt, and her left hand.

Well, her butt is fine, but her left hand ended up like this:

In case you're wondering how I got the picture, they're allowed to keep their cell phones while they're in reception week.

They took xrays, and fortunately, nothing is broken. She just has some deep bone bruises on her hand and wrist. However, this injury did prevent her from leaving for actual basic with her unit on Wed. the 23rd. Because you can't do pushups with your arm in a thing.

So on Wednesday, all the girls except Danni and one other girl who has some sort of infection, left. And a new crop of girls came in. When the first group left? My girl grabbed a bottom bunk.

She is pissed, because reception is boring, and she has to stay another week. As far as I know, she will actually start basic this Wednesday, March 2nd. You know what they do in reception? They sleep, eat, clean and work out. Woooo.

On the bright side, she said the food is surprisingly good. On the night I talked to her, she said she had some amazing spinach lasagna. So there's that.