How adventurous was your kid during college and beyond? How did you deal with it?

Our son never met a challenge he didn’t like. He left for boarding school across the country at 14. Then he chose a service academy for college. It started with six weeks of basic training called “Beast” which included learning how to survive a chemical attack by removing his gas mask in an active gas chamber exercise (those videos are NOT pretty). He learned to go days without sleep and weeks without showering. He ate out of packets. He blew stuff up. He rappelled out of helicopters. He became a sharpshooter and learned how to drive a tank. He learned forms of self defense that included various ways to kill with precision. He took survival swimming in a pool with battle effects where near-drowning was the point. These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. There were other “adventures” to be sure.

He endured four years in the gray prison on the Hudson where all of these training exercises were in addition to daily formation, inspections, battle drills, rowing crew, competing on the Cyber team, and excelling in a very tough engineering curriculum. Since graduation, he’s been deployed to Guam with a recent six-month stint in Qatar, his first experiences outside the contiguous U.S.

Did/do I worry about him? What would be the point of that? As @kelsmom posted, he’s an adult. These are his choices. He’s happy. And the Army hasn’t killed him yet.

ETA: Perhaps I should mention that my freshman college roommate and I hitchhiked up Highway 1 from Mexicali to San Francisco the summer of ‘77. I’m not prone to fear.

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