CHANGE

Full disclosure: I write about these incidents as though the offense was purely innocent. In retrospect, I regret some things I have done. But, I didn’t and still don’t think it was fair to have expelled people who were ready to devote their lives to military service, because they did recreational drugs once or twice. One of our most successful presidents “didn’t inhale” the marijuana, right? I haven’t done drugs since the day that caused my expulsion.

So I got called into the the Legal Attache’s office at USNA. He was— not to mince words— a prick. It’s almost like he had watched every military movie out there that had a bullying officer, consolidated every ornery and over-the-top characteristic, and meshed them into his over bench-pressed body.  The coward who had given my name, and dozens of others, was one of us. He had pretended that he, too, had been betrayed by a midshipmen. All along it was him. He had been on summer training with my best friend, who had entrusted him with all of our secret dabblings into recreational drugs. At the time, he was just a friend. When he was caught some months later, he negotiated a deal. Give a list of all midshipmen he knew of that had done drugs, he’d get a lighter sentence.

So here I was, six months later, a prisoner to the Academy’s legal system. They had all they needed on me to let me go in October. But as new buds appeared on spring trees, I was still there— waiting. They wanted to court martial my best friend, and the only person who could corroborate the bastard’s story was me. So LCDR. Jackass sat me down and threatened me.

“I hear you wanna leave.  Well, lemme tell you something. I can keep you here as long as I want. Either you write a statement detailing everything you know- and I know you know what I’m talking about- or you’ll be here to kingdom come.”

So I sat. And I wrote. And he read it. And he tore it up. And I didn’t get to leave.

He may have been an ass- but he was right. I lied about it all. I knew everything. But if I had told the truth at least ten other people would have been kicked out. People that have made fine officers in the Navy. People whose lives would have been shattered by some ass’s inability to keep his mouth shut and take the hit for something he had done to himself all by himself. So yeah, I lied about the mushrooms and a whole ‘lot of other things… and I’m glad I did.