Fake It Till You Make It.
A Golden Retriever in Doberman’s Clothing.
During my service, I was a ranger instructor for American soldiers. I spoke some English naturally; the army decided I was qualified to yell at Americans in the mountains.
At first, I was happy about it. I figured my English would improve while I was in the army.
Then I saw the training grounds. My happiness disappeared. I couldn't imagine surviving there.
The job was pretty much the opposite of who I was.
The army was already crawling with guys in their early twenties, and the ranger course was the kind of place where you had to have enough testosterone to power a small city.
It was also dangerous. One wrong move could lead to a serious accident, or worse, so everyone had to stay tense from beginning to end.
And the instructors were expected to be intimidating. We were supposed to have enough presence to make trainees nervous just by standing there. Discipline was everything. Kindness was, apparently, not part of the curriculum.
The first thing we learned was how to wear our hats.
You pulled the brim down to your eyebrows so the trainees couldn't see your eyes. The idea was that if they couldn't see your eyes, they couldn't read your mind.
It worked surprisingly well. With your face half-hidden in shadow, you looked scary before you even opened your mouth.
Your voice mattered, too. Loud. Clear. Short. Commanding.
Unfortunately, I was about as far from macho as a man could get. I didn't drink or smoke. I liked dogs and children. I enjoyed exercise, but I had no interest in boxing, hockey, or anything else that involved people enthusiastically trying to hurt each other.
Given the choice, I'd much rather spend an afternoon in a quiet library with my girlfriend than run around with a bunch of guys.
And that was the guy who became a ranger instructor.
Looking back, standing there in my instructor's hat, I was basically a Golden Retriever with a decent build.
What they wanted was a Doberman.
Still, I pulled my hat down to my eyebrows and did my best to look the part.
The loud voice wasn't a problem. I already had one. Short commands weren't a problem either. I was never much of a talker.
The real problem was intimidation. I needed the trainees to feel something when they saw me.
Fear, preferably. But I decided to go with respect.
So I came up with a little plan
The ranger course involved running up mountains over and over again, which exhausted the trainees pretty quickly. Within thirty minutes, their uniforms were stuck to their bodies and sweat was pouring down their faces.
I always made sure to reach the top twenty or thirty meters ahead of them.
My assistant instructor was behind them, keeping track of anyone who fell behind, so I had nothing to worry about.
Once I reached the top, I took off my hat. Then I did what any highly trained military professional would do.
I rested.
I cooled myself down, wiped away the sweat, and caught my breath. Then I stood there looking completely relaxed, waiting for the trainees to arrive.
I wanted it to look as if I had simply floated up the mountain.
Eventually, I'd hear it.
"Ranger! Ranger! Ranger!"
They were almost there. That was my cue. I'd put my hat back on, pull the brim down to my eyebrows, look down at them with a completely expressionless face, and yell:
"Hurry up!"
The trainees, red-faced and gasping for air, would look up at me with what I later learned was something close to admiration.
Once that image was established, everything became much easier. They were intimidated by me. Some of them even respected me.
It still makes me laugh when I think about it. These were American soldiers; some of them had actually been in combat, and yet they were wary of a guy who had simply been drafted into the army.
They had mistaken a Golden Retriever for a Doberman.
Before long, word spread throughout the American unit: the instructor who never got tired and never broke a sweat.
Every group of trainees finished their week of training and went back to base carrying the story with them. So whenever a new group arrived, I was already a legend.
Which meant I had no choice but to keep the trick going.
The legend disappeared quietly the day I was discharged.
I went back to the world I used to live in—the world where I didn't have to pull my hat down over my eyebrows.
*You can check out When a Good Soldier Breaks: The Story of L and Full Metal Jacket
*The top image was created by Nano Banana
Comments
Post a Comment