Day 60: Hell Week

Hell Week is an oft-used oft-misunderstood slang term in our language. Yeah we use it to symbolize a trial or a tough stretch or whatever, but it begs the question.

What is the original Hell Week? I'm glad you asked.

Hell Week is the sixth week in Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL School, which in short is where they train the Navy SEALs. Shocker I know. Through the first five weeks, you do pretty easy training. 5-6 hours of sleep a night, classic military training really. Lots of running, log lifting, running, sand crawling, running, obstacle courses, and, of course, running. Hell Week is what really separates the people who are going to make it to be SEALs.

Week six begins at exactly midnight on Sunday morning when the instructors blare the sounds of battle, get you up and run you out to do all those same drills and firing drills and all sorts of drills. . . on what is really no sleep. It's been said that the average recruit gets about 1-2 hours of sleep a night and thats cat napping from exhaustion anytime you can. It's not uncommon for a SEAL, when talking to a reporter, look back and go "Oh yea, I remember hallucinating during Hell Week. Fun stuff I tell you." Yeah, you read that right. HALLUCINATION caused by SLEEP DEPRIVATION. 2/3rds of the BUD/S class usually quits during Hell Week. If you make it through Hell Week, the rest of the road is pretty easy, but some few recruits still get leave because they can't take it anymore. But Hell Week is like living on the frontlines of a battlezone for an entire week, except its hard to die.

That is Hell Week, and I did that off the top of my head. I used to study the Navy SEALs and Marines when I wanted to be the next Tom Clancy very early in my writing career.

Now the question becomes, "Yes Ben you totally expanded my mind with information I did not have (and will probably not use in my lifetime), but why did you bring this up? You've given me no indication about anything in your personal life which is a huge departure from any of your recent blogs where most of the time you're pretty frank and candid and real. What's up with that?"

Well I'll tell you whats up with that.

I was at Whataburger on Sunday night (there are few nights that I'm NOT at Whataburger, even on my nights off), and I was conversing with another employee who has a close relative in the hospital on a ventilator and such (rough situation) and she said her life was improving, which was good. Then she asked me how my life was. I had my girlfriend with me, but I was like, "You know what, I really can't complain. My life's pretty good these days." And I meant it. That was 9:35PM.

1:48 AM: My parents wake up, and the porch light is still on, and I'm not home. So they text me. No response. They get out of bed, drive to the church, nothing. Drive to Whataburger. I left at 10. So it begs the question, what happened to me?

2AM: I arrive at home just ahead of my parents and I got asked the inevitable question: Where was I until 2AM on a Sunday night when I had to go to school at 6am? This my friends is a character moment: A moment where you get to see what you're really made of. So naturally, you should know the answer, but to keep you from guessing, I'll tell you the answer.
I lied. Which was insanely silly of me, but I did it.

Well lets just say it didn't go over well. At all. As well as it really shouldn't have. But I failed at the Sunday Night edition of the Character test.

As I go through all the fallout and move forward, let's hope I don't fail the next edition.