Letter to Dad dated Feb. 19, 2007

The following came to me on Feb. 22nd which obviously a while back but I just found out how to post on a blog!
Dear Dad:
Hey Dad! Hope all is well on the home front. Things are pretty good here (well, relatively). It sure sucks though. It's hard getting yelled at constantly for doing things that seem perfectly normal. I even got pushups for trying to stop an arguement. Actually, the pushups were for falling out of formation, but I was just trying to keep a fight from breaking out. Especially because it happened on the way to church. Gotta love the Army.

For the Army, the food is absurdly good. Don't get me wrong, its not gourmet, but its way better than I expected.

Right now, I am at "sick call". I have a cough, cold and sore throat. I was going to try to tough it out but the Dril Sargeants said today was a good day to go because there is not graduation requirement training today. I wrote Mom a letter last night, and asked her to show it to you so that I didn't have to write the same stuff all over again. Let Mom know that my graduation date is supposed to be April 20th and family day is shortly before that, but I don't know that exact date. That means I have two months to go. Yikes!

We were issued our M16A2 rifles two days ago. We have to carry them with us everywhere all the time and we even sleep with them in our sleeping bay. (locked up of course). We haven't gotten to fire them yet. The darn thing weights about 10 lbs. so carrying it in front of tyou for long distances gets tiring. I'm going to name my rifle "Sandy". Why? Just the first name I thought of, and I decided to go with my gut.

My battle buddy is a guy named Morrison. He is nice enough but not too intelligent. No one here is all that smart. It's tough not being able to have a conversation that consists anything more than "farts, poop, females (their private parts) or any number of stupid comments".

I got in trouble for laughing the other day. The drill sargeants aren't too keen on it when they say something and you laugh.... even if they say something funny. When they caought me laughing he asked me, "What's so funny, Private?" I responded, " Nothing, Drill Sargeant." He said, "Then why are you laughing?" I responded, "Because DS Neely said something funny, Drill Sargeant." He said, "So you lied when you said 'nothing'?" I said, "Yes, DS." He made me write "I am a liar" 1000 times. I wrote it 608 times before the guys in my bay helped out and each wrote it 50 times for me. (About 8 guys helped my out.)

Well, that's all the news I have from the "sick call" front. I miss you guys. Write me soon.
I Love You,
PFC John Owens Jr.