VINCE

We start Flag Detail tomorrow. We had a two hour training session yesterday on how to raise, lower, fold, carry, and store both the Minnesota State Flag and the American Flag. I will be involved in the process roughly every three days as we rotate. I’m a little nervous about it. Not because of punishment for doing something wrong, but because I have respect for the flags and I want to look good doing the job.

However … If somebody, even by accident, lets any part of either flag touch the ground, and staff finds out about it before we front-and-center about it, our sister squad and ours will owe 2,000 blue-hat pushups. That’s 2,000 sets of 40 divided up between 34 guys that need to be documented and completed over the next however many days are left when the potential event occurs. So needless to say, we’re going to be careful.

If it does touch the ground and we admit to it we split up 200 sets. EZ

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It’s been a long day. I’ve run 4.2 miles, lifted weights for an hour, sat through three hours of treatment, cleaned the treatment building (my job), eaten three terrible meals, read the last 100 pages of my Bill Bryson book (awesome!), written four pages for you guys, written four pages on cross-addiction for treatment, and … well, that’s good enough right? My wrist is sore, so I say good day.

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Less than 24 hours after writing the post about the Flag, somebody in my squad dropped it. The whole thing. Right on the ground. I was not in that five-man formation so I’m not feeling the “heat”, but I will be responsible for some pushups. The officer in charge of the detail isn’t here today so I can’t tell you much more.

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As a squad we owe 200 sets of boot camp four-count pushups. That’s 40 each set. That’s 8,000 divided by 17 of us. That’s for one squad member dropping the flag, then being honest about it. Yesterday we knocked out 37 sets as a squad. We should be done in a couple days.

What surprised me is that a few of us quite vocally stated that they didn’t want to help at all. Their argument was based on the fictional idea that we wouldn’t help them if they had dropped Old Glory themselves. I feel a lot of anger toward them for that. We are over four months in and should be working as a squad, but some continue to have negative attitudes and no desire to change.

All that said, I know that I can only control my thoughts, feelings, and actions. And I am not staff. I just wish staff would do something about these people instead of pushing them through the program and back out on the streets. I’ve worked so hard to be where I am now, and it just doesn’t seem fair. And it isn’t, is it?