spiker's blog: "College Days..."

So, one of the great things about joining the military and going ROTP (ROTC in the States) is that you come away with a university degree, you get paid to do it and you don’t have to pay tuition - so you can save a stack of money. One of the less-great things is that they own your ass 24-7 all through your four year degree and for a further four or five years of military service afterwards as well. Now, when you join ROTP, you will either spend your four years of academics in a civilian university, or you will go the way of ‘the few’ and enter the ‘The Academy’ – Royal Military College.

This Canadian military academic institution is unique in the world. To be one of the select few to come away with an RMC degree is considered amongst many to be, dare I say it, elitist. During summers (between academic years) we would rejoin our civilian-educated compatriots for military training, and to be reminded that during their academic year, they were getting sex, and in copious quantities...Bastards!

Another of the not-so-great things about ROTP is that you don’t get paid very much at all whilst you’re studying, because during your four years of study you are only a lowly officer-cadet. As a result, it’s necessary to carefully budget all of your expenses in order to ensure that as much of your measly wages as possible will be spent on beer, pub-life and other social aspects of your otherwise dreary academic and military existence. It has been known for some RMC cadets to spirit away tea bags, coffee, sugar, bars of soap and other consumables from the mess hall and academic buildings to their quarters to avoid having to divert their otherwise alcohol-devoted earnings.

The fact that haircuts were necessary every two weeks or so, in order to ensure compliance with College regulations, didn’t help the beer fund in the least. However, the alternative was to risk unpleasant sanctions, which could be anything from extra duties to full-blown military charges. So it was with great enthusiasm that a few of us learned of a certain civilian hairdresser in town that needed a few ‘models’ on which their trainee hairdressers could practice their haircutting skills (or lack thereof). These haircuts were to be provided free of charge. Me and my keen colleagues were third-year cadets at the time, and this meant that we would have plenty of passes every month to enable us to leave the College grounds often enough to visit the hairdresser, thereby keeping us from falling foul of the regulations, whilst still having enough passes to get away evenings and weekends to have a decent social life- or at least as decent as our miserly wages would allow.

A class-mate of mine, Stan was an avid participant in the free haircutting sessions. He was of Polish descent with typical Slavic features such as deep blue eyes, a round face and flat, straight hair – so much so that we used to call him ‘Slav’. The salon was located on Princess Street, about a twenty-minute walk across the bridge into Kingston. All of the trainee hairdressers were training to get both their hairdressing diploma and their barbering diploma as well, but it seemed from the chit-chat during each session that they fancied the hairdressing ’bent’ somewhat more. Each hairdresser was assigned one or two RMC cadets so that they could become accustomed to their models for a few months before having to sit their practical barbering exams at the local community college. Haircutting sessions for cadets were arranged to take place during weekday evenings to allow cadets enough time to return to their quarters after classes and change from ‘battle-dress’ uniforms to jacket and tie, which was the allowed standard of dress to venture into town.

The College pub was called ‘Bill & Alfie’s’, and its main advantages were that it was located within College grounds, the beer was cheap and none of the pesky first-year cadets were allowed in. It had a huge projection-screen TV which was normally tuned either to sports events or comedy shows. One night, Dewey and I had decided to go to Bill and Alfie’s after dinner to relax, have a couple of beers and watch the game. The place was about half-full with sports fans when we got there. The TV screen was located close to the door so that everyone who entered the pub would be greeted by those watching the game, especially since everyone knew almost everyone else, in such a small college with fewer than a thousand cadets. The crowd was fairly established with no newcomers for several minutes, as the game was about half-way through, when the door opened with one last fan. It was Stan, late because he had just gotten back from his visit to the salon, sporting his normal short back-and-sides, but with the tightest, thickest ‘Toni’ perm that rose a full three inches on the top of his head! It seemed that even the sports announcers fell silent at the sight, as jaws dropped all around the room. The silence was broken finally by Steve Peters’ greeting, "NICE HAT, SLAV!” The place erupted! Poor Slav spent weeks trying to live it down.

At college we all lived in residence (during the academic year) for the entire four years - no exceptions.  Well, it was a military college after all, and they wanted us to benefit from the whole experience - not just the academics.

With so many college cadets all living in such close quarters together and all sharing similar academic stresses and military hardships, it's hardly surprising that any opportunity to upset the norm (and get away with it) was immediately acted upon.  Many of these events would present themselves in the form of practical jokes with varying degrees of complexity.

The commandant and his staff expected these practical jokes to happen and they were generally well received as long as no one got hurt, nothing was damaged beyond repair and the purpetrators would make good all damage or put things back to their original condition.

I remember returning to the college several times after a leave weekend to find someone's bedroom (bed, bookcase, desk, chair etc) perfectly made up on the lawn outside one of the residences.  So fun to marvel at these jolly japes but you always had a slight worry that it may actually be your bedroom out there, until you actually got to your room.  On another occasion (again during a leave weekend) twelve of us managed to move a fellow cadet's Austin Mini from it's place in the parking lot into one of the academic buildings through a set of double doors and up three flights of stairs, and left it on the third floor landing, to be discovered there on Monday morning.

However, those that live by the sword quite often die by the sword and the most ardent participants in these pranks often found themselves to get their just desserts, as karma found their sorry asses eventually.  An amusing example of such retribution happened to one of my Squadron colleagues one weekend - these japes mostly occured on weekends because we were all too busy running our asses off during the week.

Colin should have been the most paranoid japester in the college for all the pranks he had played on various fellow cadets and college staff, not all of which were well received by the victims.  However, he let his guard down when he went out drinking in town with several supposed friends one Saturday night. 

Everyone was buying him drinks to the point where he had passed out in the car on the way back to the college.  However, When he woke up the next morning, despite his horrible hangover, he immediately discovered that he wasn't in his comfy bed.  He found that he was flat on his back, stark naked, in a ditch beside the 401 highway which ran between Montreal and Toronto (and past Kingston).  He also found a clown suit and a five dollar bill. 

Well, they weren't picking up clowns on the 401 that day and he had no idea how far he was from Kingston - it was about 25 miles, so it took him all Sunday, with a thumping hangover, to return to the college. 

Vengence is sweet.