Oh, Please, Sir!

I recently had reason to reminisce about my life as an Army Wife. As thinking about the pain and isolation of the year that my then husband was deployed to Iraq is still painful and upsetting... I tried to think further back-- back to when the irrational reality of The Right Way, The Wrong Way, and The Army Way could be laughed about... and I started thinking about that pizza box, and about all the stone buildings at the Post that is West Poignt on the Hudson. I realized that most of my experiences there fell into one of three categories-- stone, iron, or brass. Stone buildings. Dumb as a stone. Iron cannons from every war America ever fought in, and possibly a few we didn't. Iron-tough men with no emotions and no originality. Then I started thinking about brass... and here is what I thought:

I have always wanted to understand any organized activity before I took part in it, and so it was with my future plans to become an officer's wife-- a soldier's wife-- married to the military. So, my patient fiance was asked to explain each term he used that I'd never heard before ("What the heck do you mean, the spiders are barking?!"), and the reason for each rule or social expectation or tradition in which we took part. ("So... you don't want them to know when your birthday is because you people celebrate birthdays by getting tarred and feathered, and carried around Post naked in a laundry hamper... what the HELL?!")

(This might also be a good time to tell you about the bizarre USMA tradition called "doing the Naked Man." It is the accepted high-brow version of howling at the moon. It's 11pm, after lights out, and you have spent the last four nights frantically writing your final term paper by the flickering light of your computer screen. It is due by 7 am tomorrow morning. Your computer just crashed, and the "gold-coats" --aka technical support-- are not available to help you until sometime next month. Great. Perfect. Ya know, while my life is going down the toilet anyway, I might as well do a Naked Man. So, you strip naked, grab a flashlight, and begin to run around outside, in a predetermined and traditional square pattern. This most often occurs in winter and after dark, to the cat-calls and jeering encouragement of your fellow cadets of both genders, who helpfully shine flashlights and other torches on you and the ground in front of you as you run, so that everything can be clearly seen. You can't graduate WP without doing the Naked Man at least once. And then there are the guys who find that public exposure is really their thing. There has been quite a bit of statistical analysis done on how many times you can do a Naked Man before the odds are no longer in your favor of not getting caught.

Sometimes it's even done in packs. The more participants, the greater the risk, and the more fun, apparently. The big challenge is to get around BOTH QUADRANTS of barracks and back to your room, and put your clothes on before the authorities can catch you. If they don't catch you with your clothes off, they can't punish you. And I mean CATCH you. Some of the best stories to come out of that bastion of honorable decorum have been about close calls for those brave and intrepid souls who dared to do a Naked Man before dark, and almost got caught. It's even been done by a few of the female cadets there, but not by anybody I know, of course.)

Thus it was that, come the great Ring Weekend, I knew what was really going on. I knew why we weren't allowed to go down into the knoll where the juniors (the "cows") were seated, receiving their class rings-- and all those of us parents, girlfriends, and family who'd come all the way here to witness it (and feast and dance after) had to stand around in 95* weather and strain our eyes to see all the little white-uniformed cadets running around performing arcane and unintelligible rituals. I knew that once they received their rings, there would be an insane and nefarious tradition in which freshmen are allowed to harass the WP ring recipients, so long as they do so in the traditional format:

Groups of Plebes (freshmen) run around cornering the soon-to-be-seniors in the two hours immediately following the ceremony, and quote a memorized historical poem about wanting to touch the ring-- the amazing and shiny new ring that means they are going to graduate from that pie-in-the-sky institution known as West Poignt. And the ring-wearing cadets must stand there as each person quotes the poem, and then he or she must let them touch or kiss it. It's like going on safari at Dinosaur Island, and watching the little mad packs of flesh-eating Deinonychuses hunt down and devour their much larger prey. These newer cadets have saved up months and years of silently accepted abuse from these same individuals, and NOW is finally their chance to give a little back. And they do it with GUSTO!

The other tradition was that you just HAD to have a girlfriend for the big Ring Dance-- and although the girlfriend (or your blind date for the weekend, as was often the case) thinks that what is being commented upon and rated by your fellow cadets all evening is the new ring sitting on your finger... it's actually the qualities of the girl hanging on your arm that are being discussed. Right in front of her. Some guys even make it a contest to see who can get the ugliest or least appealing date for this event. I was not amused. Talk about brass!

So, to commemorate all those poor innocent (and not so innocent) women who have gone through the ritual hazing of Ring Weekend, and never even knew it, here is a short quote from the traditional ring poem... One that always makes me laugh as I think of all these desperately heterosexual men grabbing onto each other in tight, sweaty little groups, and begging to get a turn at handling what has essentially become a symbol of his manhood. (By the way, I have no idea how I got this whole underlining thing to happen, and I can't turn it off, but that's okay because this is a commemoration of a time-honored and highly anticipated yearly event.)

Oh, what a crass mass of brass and glass...
That cool jewel that makes me drool...
Oh, please, Sir, May I touch it? May I touch it, please?