Illegal Bathroom Chatter

Freshman year at the Air Force Academy is a unique experience. Not just in the sense that it’s a rare event that only 1,100 young people engage in each year, but also in the sense that it’s an unconventional first year at college. 

There are 40 cadet squadrons with about 25 cadets per class, per squadron. This isn’t the odd part, keep reading. The two rectangular academy dorm buildings housing the cadet wing are laid out so that two squadrons share a square floor plan, each squadron getting one L-shaped half.  Still not odd yet, I know. Stop interrupting.

While upperclassmen are allowed to travel freely between squadrons, freshmen cadets are not. In fact, while penned in by invisible lines of squadron demarcation, freshmen cadets must travel the hallways of their assigned squadron L by walking in a strict position of attention along the right wall. All turns must be 90-degree facing movements. If you’re thinking of robots, you’re visualizing the gait accurately. And this manner of traversing through the dorms (and around the entire campus, actually) is the normal deployment of travel. Well, normal if you’re in your first year at the Air Force Academy. So that’s the odd part.  That, and we aren’t allowed to talk in the hallways. Talking robots would be absurd. 

We may be odd robots, but we’ve got the intelligence to figure out a way to overcome the artificial boundaries separating us from other first-year robots. One of those ways is meeting up for stealthy conversations in the bathrooms located on opposite corners where the Ls come together to create a square. 

Since rank has its privilege and very few people seek out accommodations near restrooms, freshmen rooms are typically the dorm rooms that share a wall with the corner bathrooms. But this only facilitates our plan for surreptitious conversation dominion … those higher-ranking cadets fall right into our trap.

Not only do the rooms share a wall with the bathroom, they share an air register. It’s not as gross as it sounds. Scents don’t travel through the bathroom-dorm-room register, but sounds do (please note the restraint employed to not make a doo pun). The corner dorm room becomes the de facto hub of message relay between freshmen cadets on that floor.

Whenever we want to chat with a freshman from the neighboring squadron, we go to the bathroom and knock on the register until one of the room’s operators comes online. Then we either vent through the register with whomever answers, relay a message through the ducting or beckon someone to the bathroom. The steps are manifold.

Tonight, weighed down by insomnia and an intensive academic load, I ambulate myself to the bathroom, squaring my corners, and dragging my right shoulder along walls even though no one is awake, much less out in the halls to monitor me. We’ve been programmed well.

I knock on the register with a high degree of confidence that my classmates are also awake. We’re like the fairytale elves, treading around only at night, just not as productive and certainly not sewing our souls for upperclass cobblers. After a quick chat through the metal channel, two of my classmates right-face into the bathroom. In there, we catch up, gripe and laugh … all at the volume of a grounded hummingbird’s wings.

After a healthy verbal expulsion of all the discomforts of freshman cadet life, we disband our klatsch and bid each other bidet (bet you wish I’d played that doo pun earlier now, don’t ya?)

Like the obedient automaton that I am, I square my corner as I depart the bathroom. I didn’t go in there for any physiological relief, but hanging out with co-commiseraters brings me psychological relief. That relief cushions the shock of seeing one of the squadron’s seniors when I get out into the hallway. 

Accompanying the shock of seeing any non-freshman out at this hour is the confusion of how to mandatorily greet her.

 The typical action when a freshman passes any upperclassman is to loudly shout a standard greeting of, “GOOD [morning, afternoon, evening] CADET [so and so].”  

Midnight is that magical tipping point well beyond afternoon and too premature for morning, so I’m not sure which salutation to choose from the menu. Also at odds with normal is the hall volume setting. As tempting as it is to yell a greeting, any greeting, at the top of my lungs, I know the wrath that would ensue, so I opt for a respectful hushed, “Good evening Cadet De Freitas.”

“Barrett,” she softly calls, preempting the wrath of waking anyone from their slumber. The volume of her tone of voice indicates she’s not just responding to my restrained greeting, there’s a follow on conversation to be had. 

“Yes ma’am?” I stop, execute a flawless 90-degree turn to face her and stand at a rigid position of attention. It may be the middle of the night, but military decorum is 24/7.

Air Force Academy protocol would also permit this senior cadet to demand a verbatim recitation of any number of facts, figures or quotes we are required to memorize.

She can demand to know Major General John M. Schofield's Graduation Address to the Graduating Class of 1879 at West Point. By the way, that’s the 16-word (or 15 and an initial) preface anytime we recite the quote. Word for word. Oh and, 32 years later, hearing just the name “Schofield” triggers all 16 of those words, in that order, to come to my brain. Every. Single. Time.

So, I’m ready to tell her that the discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, (if you know the quote, that’s a funny transition) her request is a more personal one.

“Barrett, did you have fun talking in the bathroom?” Her quiet accusation has the soft edges of a caring mother who guides you to realize your own bad decisions without ever having to raise her voice. The kind of gentle nurturing that makes you feel worse than if someone were just in your face shouting spittle through syllables.

Well, crap. (What’s with the poo puns? Was that my first one? Or was that number two?) Her question doesn’t leave me much maneuver room. I mean, I can deny and therefore imply she’s a liar for thinking I had been talking in the bathroom. But it seems she already knows of my bathroom talking infraction, so I admit to the crime.

“Yes, ma’am,” I whisper. 

“Don’t do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Go to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And with that, Cadet De Freitas releases me. I pivot on my outside foot to turn toward my room, unsure if I have just been reprimanded for talking in the bathroom or praised for coming clean. 

Either way, it’s another valuable lesson I learn in the L-shaped hallways of the Air Force Academy dorms. Cadet De Freitas didn’t belittle me, she didn’t give me a chance to get myself caught up in a lie, she made me aware that I didn’t get away with anything.

Yet another memory that reminds me I had an L of a time there.

Ok, I’ll get the L out of here now.