Enrollment

So the army lets me out a few days early to register for college.   I should have been in till February, but they send me home from Vietnam on 7 December 1970.   I have to enroll right away.   Until then, I’m still on active duty, a member of the 4th Infantry Division.   But from the moment I’m enrolled, I’m a civilian.

So on the 8th, a Tuesday, I went to enroll at the junior college.

What I remember is walking out of the registrar’s office, sitting beneath a tree, looking out over the campus — somebody’s throwing a frisbee — and being overwhelmed with a simple thought.   I’m alive.

I was twenty years old.

Filed under: John Samuel Tieman, Prose