My sixth and seventh grade years were spent at Lyman Ward Military Academy in Camp Hill, Alabama. I feel I should clarify that I was not much of a troublemaker before military school; more of a quiet, weirdo only child. I was, however, terrible at school and a burden on my poor mother. That still doesn’t explain me going to military school, but my mom has said she was worried about me not having any male influence in my life…so what better way to achieve that than sending me to an all boys boarding school (grades 6-12) where everyone was jackin off and fighting all day? I don’t blame her now: she was in a tough spot. She couldn’t know that I’d come out worse than I came in.

Transferring to military school in sixth grade was honestly terrifying. I’d never had older kids and adults screaming in my face before. I’d never had to call a teenager “sir.” I had never been called “scrub” instead of my name (standard for all newbs). I’d never gotten into the kind of fights that don’t get broken up, and now all these things were my life. It weighed on my eleven year old “husky” frame. My saving grace was that I never cried. I had been through a good bit of trauma in my life by then and felt all cried out. Eventually, I learned that you don’t have to be able to beat everybody up: you just have to be willing to fight anyone that’s giving you shit. So that’s what I did. Occasionally, I got my ass handed to me by some bigger, older kid, and then realized it’s not so bad. I don’t endorse military school, but it did teach me how to take a beating, and I think every kid should learn that from somewhere (not their parents, though).

The punishment for most indiscretions was push ups (usually 15 for anything minor). I was always spacing out and messing up, so I had to do pushups all the time. After a while, pushups didn’t bother me. I could do push ups all day long it seemed, and I hardly feared punishment by the end of sixth grade. I was like Gene Wilder in Stir Crazy: unfazed. 

By the start of seventh grade, I knew my way around the joint, so to speak. I was no longer a “scrub” and had risen to the meaningless rank of corporal. I had a summer growth spurt and was a little less pudgy. I also had kissed a girl over summer break and probably had a little confidence boost from that. I was no longer scared of being there, just bored. That’s when I started spending my leisure time smoking in the woods with other bad kids. Not weed: cigarettes. Hurricane Opal had recently swept through and left a lot of felled trees. Climbing felled trees and smoking cigarettes was our easiest means of rebellion. Sometimes we’d collect tobacco from cigarette butts and smoke it out of a corncob pipe (ewww). I don’t even think we liked it, it was just something to do that we weren’t supposed to be doing. 

You could visit home every other weekend if you weren’t in trouble. One weekend I visited home and brought a kid with me named Warren. Warren was a bad egg. He was only 12 but had already done time on the farm (Juvenile chain gang) for breaking & entering. We had nothing to do but cause trouble. We were roaming through a bowling alley parking lot near my house, and there’s this old Trans Am parked with 2 cartons of cigarettes in the passenger seat. Warren jiggles the handle and sees that it’s locked. I start turning and walking away thinking “oh well, we tried,” when I hear glass shatter. Warren had picked up a brick, smashed the window, and grabbed the cigs. We had to run through backyards filled with brier bushes. Got all cut up, but we had the cigarettes.

We knew we’d be searched, so we smuggled the cigarettes back into school by packing them into boxes of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creampies and gluing the box back with model glue, so it looked like they’d never been open. Warren only wanted a couple packs for himself, and I decided I would go into the cigarette business and sell the rest. Packs went for $15 dollars, and you could get single cigarettes for $1 a piece. A lot of kids got money every week ($20 usually), but the only thing to spend money on was the Canteen, which had better tasting food and some arcade games. Most kids would rather spend that money on cigarettes and take their chances with the mess hall chow. 

In order to get rid of the cigarettes, I needed help from my roommate, Cox. We went by last names, and unfortunately for him, his was Cox. You could imagine some of the unimaginative nicknames (smelly Cox, dirty Cox, Cox sucker). To say he was made fun of was an understatement, and it didn’t help that he was a big ol’ wimp about everything. But, alas, business was booming and we had nearly sold all of the cigarettes except for 3 packs. Then, one night, we get called out into the hall along with everybody else for a surprise inspection. I knew the packs were not well hidden, and sure enough, the platoon sergeant comes out of our room juggling the 3 packs and says, “are these yours?” I had to say yes, and he told everyone in our platoon to drop down and do pushups, except for me and Cox. Everyone was pissed at us, which is what they wanted. They knew that a group of boys would get together and do a blanket party on us. A blanket party was where 3 or 4 cadets would put soap bars in socks, sneak into your room, and wail on you. It had never happened to me, but I knew it hurt. 

After everyone was done doing pushups for us, we all went back to our rooms. Cox is freaking out because we both know there was going to be a blanket party. So we devised a plan: We would stay up and hide in our lockers while our beds were stuffed with towels etc. to make it look like we were in bed (I’d seen Ferris Beuller’s Day Off). Then, when the blanket party came in, we would jump out and defend ourselves with the metal bar from our locker that was normally used to hang clothes. Knowing Cox’s reputation, I kept telling him, “you better not bail on me, dude. If I have to fight by myself I’ll come beat your ass after they beat mine.” He kept reassuring me, “I’m not pussin’ out dude. No way.” Finally around 2am, we hear a quiet commotion. It was a group of 4 kids making their way down the hall, ready to bumrush our room. They bust in, head straight for Cox’s bed, and start beating on a buncha towels. As I jump out of my locker, Cox comes full steam, screaming Braveheart style, and clocks one of the kids in the back of the head with the metal bar. That kid drops like a sack of laundry, and all the other kids scatter, frightened. We dragged a semi-conscious kid outside of our door and left him there, along with 3 gym socks loaded with soap bars. We went to sleep, and I dunno what exactly happened to the kid, but he wasn’t there in the morning.

There was a retired Army Captain who lived in the Berrics with us cadets who condoned these blanket parties. Saw it as cadets policing themselves. There’s no doubt he had to deal with this kid, but he couldn’t say anything about it. When I saw him in the mess hall the next morning for breakfast, I smiled and said, “mornin, Captain.” He grumbled back, “mornin, Sandford” and, in that moment, I felt like the most untouchable 12 year old in all of Camp Hill, Alabama.