Graduating.
Oh, okay! I'll answer the question!
Let's see....
- Halloween Night simply has to be experienced to be believed. You would never even dream of some of the costumes those nutcases can create. Oh, and then there's the food fight in King Hall.
- Watching a Mid ('90) make an absolute bubbling buffoon out of Carl Sagan during a Forestal Lecture.
- Being there when a fellow Mid committed suicide. You could have heard a pin drop in King Hall during that lunch...
- Watching Alumni Hall being built. Too bad they cut down the stunning (and old) tree that used to be there.
- Walking out of the Hall to go to the library after dinner during the winter: the silence and the peace of it all.
- Watching other classes fail to beat our time on Herndon.
- 100's Night.
- 2-for-7 Night.
- Watching so many of my NAPS classmates fall out for grades.
- Sitting outside of my window up on 1-4 with my roommate, just shooting the breeze and admiring the view of the river.
- The Brick! The Brick! Who gets the Brick? (And the mayhem that followed).
- Papering the CO's office during Army Week.
- Having my room shave-bombed during Army Week.
- Diving in the test tank at NSWC Dalghren to test the first USNA human-powered submarine.
- Shelf Clip Races.
- Madmen. (Never did one, myself).
- Learning that my friends hated me because I was a 2/C Flamer.
- Learning that my friends loved me when I stopped being a 2/C Flamer.
- Getting the right answer the one time I was asked to Stop The Music.
- When the NAPSters reported for Plebe Summer the day before the rest of our class. While being led from 4-0 toward 8-0, we immediately fell into step (we marched all the time at NAPS). 40 pair of boondockers pounding a cadence down the passageway. We were gods come to claim what was ours!
- Watching us beat Army.
- Christmastime in the Yard.
- The first time I drove my car onto the Yard.
- Watching the tape of my graduation, and hearing my mother crying on it after the hat toss.
- My first night at USNA.
- My last night at USNA.
- Memories of classmates who have assumed eternal watch across the oceans of heaven.
- Tecumseh painted up as Batman.
- The 12th Company Players before football games.
- The day I visited the then-new Visitors Center circa 1999 or so. They used to have a computer that you could search for graduate's names. I did mine, and the realization that I had actually graduated when I saw my name come up.
- Watching the Gulf War on CNN, with all of us praying they'd wait until we got there.
- Watching the Berlin Wall come down.
- The Blue Angels.
- Falling into the Severn while the jellyfish were so thick you could walk on them.
- Running (and finishing) an Outer Perimeter.
- The 40-year Swim.
- Sitting in the back of my Strength of Materials class (second time around) having gotten a 27 on my second exam, and realizing I wasn't going to graduate.
- Did I mention graduating?