Adrian Estrada - Honor Guard and The White Pot

 

So, I was 19, standing in the acceptance parade at the United States Air Force Academy, surrounded by valedictorians, Eagle Scouts, team captains. I still didn't quite feel like I belonged there. Some general gave a speech about how proud we should be for graduating basic training, and that's how I really hoped I'd feel. But I didn't. I felt disappointed that I hadn't been transformed, that it hadn't been hard enough. But the year was just starting. 

 

At the Air Force Academy, a freshman is called a cadet fourth class, a four degree, although most upperclassmen just called us smacks. This is what life was like for a smack. You're always in uniform, you're always at attention. Indoors, you marched. Outdoors, you ran. 4,000 cadets would eat lunch in 15 minutes, and you were authorized seven chews per bite.

 

You were yelled at for an eighth chew, or for improper table decorum, or for moving your eyeballs, anything. And this lasted until spring, culminating in an insane series of challenges called recognition. After that, you were recognized as a human again, unless you were on the cadet honor guard. They were recognized by their upperclassmen much later. 

 

Now, people said you had to be crazy to join honor guard. But they were sharp as hell. They carried the American flag, they performed funeral honors, fired 21-gun salutes. But they were most widely known for their rifle drill team, one of the best in the nation. I had never seen anything so perfect, so precise, it was almost inhuman. Sign me up. Day one's lesson, "If it ain't hard, it ain't guard." [audience chuckles] I was in the right place.

 

When we went to practice, we wore Vietnam era helmets, black pots instead of the red baseball caps all the other four degrees wore. We did these loud little kicky flips every time we turned a corner. This [foot stomps] Naturally, everyone made fun of honor guard. [audience chuckles] And the first year consisted of running up and down hills, and crawling up and down hills, all while breathing only through your nose and keeping your chin in. We might drill once, after coming back from a run after the sun was gone, drenched in sweat, snow, and snot, unable to feel our rifles with our frozen hands. And I loved it. [audience laughter] It turns out I could hack it. I could even be one of the best. 

 

And the honor guard had a peculiar way of rewarding their best. The ridiculous helmets that we would wear to practice were all black, but there was rumor of a white one, one that would be rewarded only if someone were deemed worthy. One day, our training session was going a lot longer and harder than usual, and I found myself getting singled out. Now, I had a great gift for keeping my back straight in the push up position. And this seemed to pull a lot of weight with these guys. I was told to run circles around the group already running up and down mountains to carry their weapons, to carry them even, to see if I cared enough about the team. 

 

Now, we had all just endured what was, at that point, our most epic beating, when all of a sudden, on top of the hill, the upperclassmen stopped shouting. They got a little silly even. They made a game out of us, holding our rifles straight out, and they all started to surround me while all the other rifles dropped until it was just me and them. They were grinning, which was disturbing. [audience laughter] I felt someone behind me take the black pot off my head and slam a new one back down. It didn't really fit. Smelled kind of wet dog, but I could see bright white paint out of the corner of my eyes. 

 

They celebrated by saying things like [onomatopoeia] [audience laughter] It's very touching. [audience laughter] That night, I walked into the dining hall, all eyes were on me. I had a frigging white pot on my head. You can't help, but look at it. My team got to eat at rest, which means we got to chew more than seven times and we got to talk to each other and laugh. I marched back to my room. And once I was safely inside, I took off the white pot and held it in front of me, flipped it over, and I studied all the initials that had been carved in there over the years. I immediately put A-K-E, Adrian Kim Estrada. This I could be proud of for now. Thanks.