How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am Read Online Free PDF Page B

could imagine you would be so successful,
     but I did.” I would be guessing as to why that provoked this man of forty to sob, and your guess would be as good as mine.
     In any case, after that night we never saw or spoke to each other again. Many relationships of all kinds just can’t survive
     a change in the dynamic.

The Military
    I n 1953, I enlisted in the Naval Reserve in Pittsburgh. We weren’t at war, but we still had a draft, and I assumed at some
     point I would be drafted by the Army, and I would lose two years of pursuing my profession.
    The enlistment was for eight years and required me to go to meetings once a week, go to boot camp, and be out at sea two weeks
     a year. I started reporting to the weekly meetings. My main memory is how much the uniform itched, and how hard it was for
     me to concentrate on how torpedoes work.
    There was something very wrong with my enlistment, although it wasn’t until years later that I realized it. Someone at the
     recruiting office should have told me that this was not a good idea for me because I couldn’t possibly go to weekly meetings,
     since I knew I’d be traveling to pursue the acting profession.
    Eventually, I got a letter notifying me I was now in the active status pool. I had no idea what that meant and didn’t even
     ask. I was extremely naïve. When I was around twenty-three, I received my draft notice from the Army. I reported and passed
     the physical. While I was waiting for the actual notice to be inducted, I realized I could still join a reserve unit, so I
     began to call around, but there were no openings. Then I called the Naval Reserve. They had no openings, either. I said, “I
     used to be with you people.” There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Finally, the man said, “Were you discharged?”
     I said, “No.” He said, “Then you’re still in the Naval Reserve.”
    It had been around five years since I joined, so I had three more years of meetings, and then I’d be discharged. Up until
     then I might have gone to a meeting once a week for a couple of months. But when I was settled in New York, I went to the
     Brooklyn Navy Yard, joined a reserve unit, and reported every week for three years. It was only then that I came to understand
     that being in the active status pool meant that if there was a call-up of troops, I’d be on the front lines. I was playing
     Russian roulette without knowing it.
    I went to boot camp where a drill instructor found it necessary to scream obscenities at us. Every year I would be out at
     sea for two weeks on a large warship, often off the coast of North Carolina, at Cape Hatteras.
    I progressed from seaman recruit to seaman apprentice to seaman to quartermaster third class, which is another name for navigator.
     That’s really ironic, since I have an unusually poor sense of direction.
    One extremely foggy night at sea, they assigned me the forward watch. From four a.m. to eight a.m., I was to stand at the
     very front of the ship for a possible visual sighting of another ship, which I guess our radar could miss. Having a very active
     imagination, within five minutes I spotted more than one large ship heading our way and alerted the bridge. Our large warship
     came to an abrupt stop and began to reverse engines. Soon they realized there was nothing out there and told me to go back
     to bed.
    Once I picked up a microphone that allowed me to speak to the entire ship. There was a Jerry Lewis–type kid who was kind of
     my sidekick. I said on the ship’s PA system, “Foreman, that is Foreman, report to the top deck, on the double! That is
Foreman
!” The poor kid raced up to the top deck and arrived in a minute out of breath to see me standing there smiling at him. I
     still can’t believe I actually did that.
    I enjoyed my three years in the Naval Reserve. The best moment was when an African American sailor and I listened on the radio
     to Floyd Patterson regaining his heavyweight championship