Bad Luck Cadet Read Online Free PDF Page A

“clicks” were already
forming.
    Cadet Chavez sat next to me. He was obviously
as stressed as I was. I found out he was an emergency medical
technician sent to the academy in order to be part of a SWAT team.
He was twenty-seven years old, fifty pounds overweight and worried
about what he’d gotten himself into. He was told the academy would
be a piece of cake, but he was having doubts.
    I had doubts too. We made a pact to complete
the academy and help each other out. We weren’t such an unlikely
friendship, we were both in over our heads and both needed to lose
weight. It felt great to have a friend and he was also in squad
five along with me. We would suffer together.
    Our first inspection was horrible.
    Sgt. Dickens as well as all six squad advisers
were in attendance to find something wrong. And they found plenty.
Our ties were the improper length. Our shoes were not shined to a
high gloss. We had lint on our black pants. Several of the guys did
not have a close enough shave, due to shaving the night before to
save time this morning.
    In all we were given eighty pushups and six
hill runs. The pushups were done on the spot and the hill runs
would be executed after class. I also found out why we practiced a
duck stance early that morning. Sgt. Dickens placed one foot
between my boots, put his face an inch from mine and began the
inspection from the top of my head down to my toes. I know my last
OBGYN appointment was not this thorough.
    It was a relief to enter our classroom and
begin learning.
    The first two hours every Monday would be with
Lieutenant Griffin for report writing. He talked and told stories
more than he taught us report writing but we enjoyed him
tremendously.
    Our binders were explained to us. A schedule
was located in the front of the first binder and encompassed the
entire eighteen weeks of the academy. All our lesson plans were
outlined, which explained the four inch thickness of the binders.
We were told we would get a break every hour but most importantly
we were not to fall asleep in class. We could stand up in the back
of the room but there would be hell to pay if one of us was caught
sleeping.
    Our first lesson from our binders was on the
history of policing. Robert Peel created the first organized police
unit in England called “Bobbies” in 1929. He was our founding
father and his ideas lived on in modern policing.
    After a lunch break, it was back to the
classroom. Sgt. Dickens stuck his head in and did some yelling on a
regular basis but learning was the focus. We had different
instructors for different lecture modules. My brain wanted to
explode by the end of that first day in class. I actually wish it
had, because waiting for us were our six hill runs we’d earned that
morning during inspection.
    The hill consisted of a quarter mile of
switchbacks up a steep, rocky dirt path to a water tower. It looked
like a nightmare. And it was. Add in the 109 degrees outside and it
was hell. I decided I needed to straighten up my ways. I didn’t
want to go to hell if it is anything like these hill
runs.
    We had water bottles at the bottom and took
drinks between runs. I was the second to last person to the top on
the first run. We were all going at our own pace. One of my
roommates slipped and fell. She twisted her knee and sat out the
last few trips to the top.
    We were all focused on the hill and didn't
notice when Sgt. Dickens showed up. I was taking my last trip
upward.
    “What the hell are you doing?” He yelled at
the cadets waiting at the bottom for the stragglers to
finish.
    “Are you individuals or a team?" He demanded,
"I want your punishment done as a unit. Start over and get it right
this time.”
    Higgins, Chavez and I turned around and went
back for our classmates. We formed two lines and ran six more hill
runs together. We were then released for the day. I was too tired
to eat and went back to my room. I ironed my shirt for the
following day, tried to shine my shoes but fell