We were preparing for an inspection from our Company Commander and our Drill Sergeant, who was a big, barrel chested guy, was conducting a pr-inspection of his own, to make sure we were all squared away.

We all stood at parade rest in front of our lockers facing the center of the room. When he looked in my locker, he informed me I had something “wrong”, and he’d give me thirty seconds to turn around and look into my locker, identify the problem and correct it.

At his command, I turned around and stared at my locker with confusion. The clock was ticking… He told me to look at the lockers beside mine and tell him what the difference was. I happened to be wearing my “stylish” military-issue black horned rimmed glasses that day. On this particular day I had the head strap attached so they couldn’t fall off during training. I choked under the pressure and responded that I couldn’t see anything different.

As I turned back toward him, he quickly snatched my glasses from the nose bridge to pull them off while shouting “don’t these things work”??? It turns out the head strap was stronger than the frames of the glasses, and they promptly broke in the center, resulting in the two halves of my glasses dangling comically on both sides of my chest, still linked together from the head strap.

My room mates and I busted out laughing as we watched our beloved Drill Sergeant turning red in embarrassment. It was one of those “priceless” moments during Basic Training.

My infraction was having my uniforms hanging in the locker facing the wrong direction. That was the first I knew that there was a “correct direction” for clothes to hang!

I had a lot to learn…