Terminal Lance #305 “Life After EAS: Tough Mudder, Tough Sell”

I’ve been out for a while now and it seems like every friend I have that does these sorts of things really wants me to run it with them. I know, we did in fact do really stupid shit all the time in the Marine Corps like destroying our bodies out of obligation and sometimes pride. With that said, nowhere in that sentence is it implied that I would ever want to do it again. I had a good enough time damaging my cartilage over 4 years of Active Duty service to be absolutely uninterested in any O-Course, moto run or ‘Tough Mudder’ again.

Tough Mudder? More like Pissed-Off Staff Sergeant’s Angry Hazing Session at the O-Course.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I couldn’t decide today if I wanted to do a joke about Tough Mudder or about the epic, sprawling wilderness of facial hair that many Marines adopt post-Corps. In a dilemma such as this, sometimes doing both ends up working out. There’s obviously a lot of hoopla surrounding hair in the Marine Corps–it can even get a little weird actually–but few things are as ubiquitous about the Marine Corps as haircuts and clean shaves. A spark of rebellion is frequently present in Terminal Lance’s such as myself, trying desperately to reach the absolute maximum of hair-length regulation during your weekly haircut. Three-inches on top is all you’re allowed, and it absolutely has to fade to a zero.

No more! Once you EAS, it’s hard not to indulge a little bit in the masculine magnificence of your own head. Like a repressed teenage girl drinking brazenly out of conceded rebellion at her first party away from her parents, when Marines are finally given freedom to do as they wish after four years of high and clean-cut standards, it can get a bit hairy. Puns aside, you’ll be lucky to find a Marine that doesn’t look like this a short time after he ends his active contract.

Well, unless you’re like me of course, and grow the beard of a small child.

Damn Spaniard genetics!