Things you learn in the army will shock you. It even changes you forever. The way you look at life and at everything else in the world becomes different. No longer do you see yourself as a dependant of someone but a provider of something. Your importance in society is immediately elevated as everyone sees you now as an adult and no longer a teen or a youth but someone who is to be taken seriously. However, that's not how society reacts to soldiers. They see us as a nuisance. Why? Well, once every week, we get to get back to society to comform to the way of life that we are used to for the past 18 years of our lives. This is a pest to them as we fill up the trains and buses and restaurants and shopping centres with green fatigues and that jungle stench. Children see us and they run away, often in terrible fright. Yes, we might be training to be killers. But we do not kill our own citizens. Yes, we do smell. But its not because we want to. We do know how to take care of our own personal hygiene. Dont you think we know that we smell? We even hate to smell. But its not within our power to not sweat. Heck, not sweating might even mean certain death for anyone. We do what we can and those that we cant, we compromise. We do not do this because we like it. It's because we have to. We're not forced to. We're obliged to. Its an obligation that will last for the nxt 2 years. The only thing that keeps us going is each other.