Confessions

I enlisted in the USAF almost forty years ago. When I signed up I knew Basic Training lasted six weeks and the literature given me when I signed up made it clear that the physical aspects of those six weeks would be relatively light. Perfect. I was not in the least athletically inclined. Well you guessed it..
I get to base and find out there is this dreadful two mile course called the “Confidence Course” in a forested area. It would never hold a candle to anything the Army has but it was plenty enough instill dread in me. Come the fateful day to put my physical incompetence on display I started through the thing and found I was managing, but just barely. Failed events where allowed one retry and that is what was keeping me advancing but was also wearing me out much faster than my physically competent comrades. About two thirds of the way through I was just desperate for an end to the thing but failure was no option in my mind (yet virtually inevitable) and just then with the hardest parts of all just ahead a guy I only knew as a class clown type was standing beside me and he said in a soft conspiratorial tone “if we just went through there” (pointing only with his head) we would miss the killer water events and be done. He took off for the trees and I was right behind him.
How no one noticed us slipping away is beyond me. The consequences of getting caught would have been no picnic either!
We went through that forest for quite a while and I had no idea how he was navigating, but he was. We broke out into the opening at the end of the course and we blended in somehow with guys from a different barracks and we were just a little earlier getting there than our own barracks mates and of course they were questioning us as to just how this could be. I then learned my guide was just as good of a liar as was a navigator. I still smile at this memory.