Nope, full-on down time. It was a pretty celebratory night, and we surely paid for it when our green belts came back on duty and our senior drill instructor's back was turned.

Funny enough, we should have seen it coming. One of our junior drill instructors (SSgt Harper was his name) forgot his gym bag or some other belongings in the duty hut and had come back to collect them. It was the first night we were allowed to shower with hot water (and also the first night we had NO restriction on how long we could shower) so we were all there laughing and joking and reminiscing about how much the Crucible sucked as we washed a week worth of field training off of us.

Imagine about 45, 50 guys - most of them high school graduates - standing in a giant locker room-style shower with four pillars in the middle, each with 6-8 shower heads on them, and another dozen or so along the wall. Then imagine our faces when someone realizes the meanest of our drill instructors is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, and pissed as hell. He couldn't do anything, because we were granted all this free time and all these amenities by our SDI, but he knew we didn't rate it.

He stares each of us dead in the eye for a few seconds longer before saying, "You know? There's something about four dozen grown ass men standing around a hot-as-hell shower, laughing and giggling together that's just kind of...gay." We were too jovial to be brought down in mood at that point, so we did the only thing we knew to do: we gave the conditioned response to anything a drill instructor says: "Aye, sir!" He looked at us with disgust and sighed before walking out the back hatch. "...shut up, faggots." In unison, we all replied, "SHUT UP, FAGGOTS, AYE AYE SIR!" and when we heard the telltale squeaking of the door, we gave him the proper greeting as he left. "GOOD EVENING SIR!" And in the distance we heard him lose it: "GOD DAMN FAGGOTS! ALL OF 'EM! ...(something, something) GONNA MAKE 'EM PAY TOMORROW!"

The homoerotic giggling kicked right back up.