I have received grade A training for queuing

Depending on who you ask, army is either something that turns boys into men or a crazy institution bent on making the whole world eat pea soup from inconvenient aluminium cases. I, for once, decided to forget all these zany stories and obviously biased opinions they were all too eager to tell me about, have an open mind and potentially have some good times with weapons and whatnot you have in the army.

With this in mind, I was not depressed at all on the day I had to hop on the train to take me from my beloved home city to a town that, despite having a land area of over ten times greater than that of Helsinki, had less than 1/10 of the population. Sure, it was raining like the sky was about to fall and all the seats were booked on the train I was meant to take meaning I had to stand throughout the whole trip, but all in all I was still in good spirits.

In a few hours I and dozens of my future comrades arrived at the station, where we were packed into numerous busses that would take us to the actual base. People were tense and there wasn’t much talking in the bus. Some had managed to team up with their friends and produced most of the chatter in the otherwise silent transport vehicle.

Upon arriving, we were greeted by a sight that would become oh so familiar in the future. A queue. A long queue. A queue so long that if the last person was able to see to the front (which he obviously was not able to do without binoculars or an observatory telescope), the demoralising effect would’ve bored through his skull and made him suicidal on the spot. This may also be the reason why it was forbidden to carry knives or other sharp items, but I must admit that this is purely speculation.

The next few hours are a bit hazy, but I have faint memories of actually reaching the place we all were so eager to get to. Basically it was a shorter queue where we were greeted by military police checking into our bags and dogs sniffing around for drugs. This made me panic a little. I crossed my legs and hoped that week-old dirty underwear would not be considered a hallucinogenic drug and I’m sure everyone saw the relief on my face when the hound had passed me without barking or taking a firm bite out of my butt.

Fast forward a few more queues and checkpoints, I was sitting on my combat stool with my enormous pile of combat equipment next to me and the corporal guiding me how to make the combat bed. After the wondrous demonstration on how difficult can a simple task of making the bed be made I started stuffing my combat equipment to my combat closet. This was no simple task as the volume of my equipment was well greater than that of the closet. This meant that in order to call it a day and finally get some sleep, I had to quickly apply the padlock when I managed to close the door and hope that the closet doesn’t explode during the night and kill me instantly in my sleep.

Well as you may guess, the closet held. During the next few days we were taught how to bend time and matter so that we could fit all the equipment in without an immediate risk of sudden and terminal closet termination. Also we were instructed on how to queue for dining, what kind of line to make when we have a lesson in the auditorium and then there was a grand demonstration of queuing that also tested our newly learned skills: the doctor’s inspection. I’ll give you a hint on how that went. The inspection itself took 15 minutes. It was the only thing we had time for that day. Guess how the rest of the day was spent.

Aside standing in the line, during the first days we were mostly taught very basic stuff like marching without rhythm and how to hold the toilet paper when wiping your butt. We have also received our assault rifles, but chances are that we won’t get to do anything with them for a good while.

Oh dear, I almost slipped into the dreadful canyon of unhappiness for a moment there. Must be all the queuing I’ve been doing in the past days. Please excuse me while I nudge my head with my happy hammer until I pass out smiling. See you next time!

-Fatal