All Aboard The Nitwit Roller Coaster!

My cousin spent his youth as a nitwit, and real life hit him very hard in early adulthood. For those playing along, please pause reading at any time to double-face-palm (and maybe keep a tally or ring a bell).

Once [Cousin] got an idea in his head, no amount of advice, reality, or brain cells would change his mind. Pain and bleeding were usually required.

[Cousin]’s Idea #1: it would be hilarious for my friend and me to run around shooting each other with a BB gun. 

Cue a very unsurprising need to go to the hospital because he got shot right between the eyes. He popped the pellet out like a pimple and went home bleeding from the face to get his mom to take him to the hospital. The very paper-thin lie told was that the gun just went off on a hair trigger. He was fifteen when this happened and had already spent several years under instruction of proper gun control. So, no, this wasn’t even A Christmas Story situation of being in the single-digit age range and having no safety instruction. He knew proper gun control and safety; he just didn’t think he needed it for a mere BB gun.

[Cousin] had a growth spurt in his early teens that topped him out somewhere around six feet tall by the beginning of high school and got into a lot of fights. 

[Cousin]’s Idea #2: “Fighting and brawling are fun, but I get in trouble if I throw the first punch. I know! Just say it is always the other guy’s fault!”

In the four years from freshman to senior, he got into nine or ten fights, all of which were “started by the other guy.” While I agree that some teens decide to prove their toughness by picking fights with the biggest student on the campus, [Cousin] made no secret that he was down to fight anybody, anywhere. But of course, he never started the fights. To hear him tell it, not one single, solitary, fight in his life was because [Cousin] stirred the pot in any way, shape, or form. 

[Cousin] got in trouble a lot. His mom made excuses for him (she’s a nitwit for a whole other story), and thus, he never learned. He reached adulthood with a nose that no longer worked properly for breathing due to it getting broken enough times. (Pain was not a teacher for this one.)

By the time he reached eighteen, despite “never starting fights”, he was on a hair trigger for physically lashing out. It got to the point where I no longer felt safe around him after he very nearly punched me because I bumped into his backpack. (For context, I’m a 5’3″ woman, and he’s six feet tall and can palm my head easier than a basketball.)

[Cousin]’s Idea #3: “Enlisting will give me an easy ride to get my college paid for since I don’t mind fighting.”

Graduation happened (don’t ask how he managed), and [Cousin] got hyped up on recruitment propaganda to join the military. We tried to get him to understand that going into the Service was going to be insanely difficult and extremely strict. Grandpa (World War II and the Vietnam War, Navy) and my dad (Vietnam War, Navy) both told him stories of the boot camp Hell that they had to endure and how none of his goof-off, class clown, schoolyard tough guy nonsense antics would be tolerated. But [Cousin] didn’t take either of them seriously and enlisted.

He lasted about a month before calling his mom, crying about how hard it was in Boot Camp and how he wanted to come home. But this is where reality smacked him full power; you can’t just quit once you enlist. 

“Well, that’s just too bad. You wanted this, so now you’re going to have to be an adult and stick with it,” was the response he got from everyone he tried calling with his sob story.

Unhappy that he was getting zero sympathy, and with the full maturity of his nineteen years of age, [Cousin] got the brightest idea EVER!

[Cousin]’s Idea $4: “If you don’t like boot camp, just run away!”

The first his mom learned of it was getting a call from [Cousin]’s commanding officer, telling her that he had gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave). Nobody knew where he had gone initially. 

When [Cousin] tried calling his family, he was told that he had to go back and face the consequences of his actions. No one was willing to pick a fight with the US Military on his behalf, and he couldn’t understand why. He’d always gotten his butt hauled out of the fire before! What did being a legal adult have to do with it?! 

He was eventually found and picked up, now deeply in trouble. Deciding on his next smartest plan, he pulled the class clown nonsense and played the fool — talking to his shoe as if it were a phone, and things like that.

In the end, [Cousin] was dishonorably discharged. He was happy to have gotten out, only to discover that this didn’t look good at all to prospective employers. He couldn’t get a decent job, eventually having to go to school to become a mechanic. He was very good with vehicle repair, but his dishonorable discharge still haunted him. With more years under his belt and those years under the cloud of Consequences Of His Own Actions, [Cousin] matured quickly.

After discussing how to clear it from his record, [Cousin] reenlisted. This time he wasn’t an idiot about it and managed to not only get through boot camp but also was on his way to getting the rank of Ranger. This was sadly nipped in the bud due to a car accident while on leave, and he ultimately had to be medically discharged due to a back injury. His dishonorable discharge was wiped from his record, and while he still has nitwit qualities, a lot of them are no longer in play in his life.