Potty Training, or, Shitting in the Marines
August 7, 2007
A co-worker told me this account of one former Marine, now father to a two-year old. The two year old rather precociously enjoys privacy while pooping in his diaper. While the kid was ensconced in the bathroom, focusing on the task at hand, the father shook his head and said, “That kid would never make it in the Marines.”
He then went on to explain — when he was training in the Marines, they shit when they were told to shit. Or, at least, they were supposed to. They’d come to the end of whatever they were drilling, and the drill instructor would bellow, “Now: GO TAKE A SHIT!”
The 28 men in the group would then all run to a bathroom on the second floor. Three stalls, no doors. They had 15 minutes to collectively take care of business, and the process would be accompanied by vigorous harassment of whoever happened to be on the pot. When 28 men are trying to shit in 15 minutes, no one can really go fast enough.
If at all. When asked, the former Marine said that he “just couldn’t do it.” He’d hold it for days, then get up in the middle of the night. One wonders if he felt any shame for his inability to shit on command — something our society demands only of dogs and soldiers.
If this phenomenon was occurring anywhere else in society we’d call it abuse and pathology. If such exertions of biological self-deprivation and mortifications of the flesh are signs of honorable fortitude, we ought to be drafting anorexics, bullimics, and self-cutters.
Where is the line between having autonomy over one’s body, and being completely within a system of discipline? America sells the military to young men as a means of gaining autonomy, self-respect, some kind of self-mastery. These are young men, perhaps, who feel themselves to be at the mercy of their circumstances, their future lives and choices dictated by class or race or past mistakes. It must take some particular kind of unease with oneself to want to be erased and rebuilt as some other kind of being.
The military will make a man out of you, so goes the wisdom. You’ll be all that (someone like) you can (ever hope to) be. You’ll be the master of your own destiny.
You will not, however, be the master of your own lower intestine. That privilege will be belong to the U.S. government until you are otherwise notified.
