Centurion; by definition, it’s the commander of a Roman army, but like most things here at USAFA, it’s taken on a different meaning. Here, a centurion is anyone who’s marched 100 tours, and if you don’t know what a tour is, it’s basically a walking detention. You put on service dress, your big wheel cap, white gloves, and an M16 rifle so you can walk around the terrazzo along the marble strips for 55 minutes in complete and utter shame… but in all reality, like most things here, you find the fun in it. Now I’ve done 21 of them so far and I have just a little more than a few to go (my reason for them is another story for another time), and honestly since I currently am on “base arrest” and can’t leave anyway, tours are something that I’ve actually started to look forward to for some odd reason. Maybe I just like the feeling of adding the tallies I’ve started to keep on the inside of my hat, or maybe because there’s an unspoken honor in tours around here. Why? Because it there seems to be a positive correlation between how many tours you marched and how great of an officer you were. It’s a strange kind of infamy that only the most daring of cadets ever feel. Here’s what I like about tours, though, you get to meet all the Academy’s delinquents and so you make some pretty cool friends. When I say delinquents, I don’t mean child criminals, we’re just cadets who got mixed up in the wrong crowd at the wrong time and got in trouble because someone decided to drop the dime. Like I could tell you some pretty great stories but that’s probably not the safest thing to do here.
That's why the reason I’m marching tours is one of those things on a need to know basis, but basically I made a mistake and now I’m just your average cadet on probation, learning what I can in the next six months of doing my time. I am learning one thing however, and that’s that some risks are worth taking. Am I currently in a hell of a lot of trouble? Oh yeah, but am I glad I kept the loyalty to and of my close friends? Of course. Could I have changed the course of the incident that got us to this point? Probably, but am I owning my mistakes and picking myself back up? Without a doubt. That’s what I think this place is supposed to be at least. Sometimes it feels like even though we’re just cadets who are here to train and to learn, we’re treated as airmen who already know what we’re doing, and while it’s frustrating, we just have to roll with the punches, and trust me there are a lot.
But like I said, I’m finding the fun in it. Getting a friend to hook you up and blast music out their window is major, or playing human Pac-Man on the strips, or making the most obnoxiously sharp facing movements for the tourists who stare at you, or if you’re me, somehow getting involved in a light saber battle with an intercollegiate fencer. People come here from all walks of life, and I’ve got a backstory and I am nowhere near the clean-cut, sharp-edged square the military advertises, but I’m trying to learn what I can to get closer to it.
I've got 69 tours left, and the incident that got me here included me saving a life. So yeah, some risks are worth taking. The rest you just have to take on the chin.
