Characters

  • Trainee Nikki Donner
  • Drill Sergeant Low

Locations

  • Ft. Jackson, South Carolina

Buffers.

Normally, when you say “buffer”, you think of the mysterious place in an electronic data device that stores information temporarily while waiting to load, or print, or whatever. Or maybe you think of a person at a nail salon that buffs your nails during a manicure or pedicure, perhaps.

But of you’ve ever been in military service, you know another dimension to this word, and that word refers to a motorized floor-cleaning device with a rotating brush at the base. It rotates, if I remember correctly, clockwise; so when you tilt back on the handle it will drift somewhat to the right, and if you tilt up on it you will drift the device to the left. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

Either way, buffers by themselves are pretty heavy and you kinda need that brush to be spinning to make it go anywhere at all. The first time someone uses a buffer it tends to dart off to one side or another, but after using it for a few weeks you have the grace of an ice-skating ballerina (or at least you think so). And sooner or later comes the thought… “I can ride this thing”.

Yes, by turning it on, mounting the motor assembly and riding it like a horse, tilting your body forward or back, you are certain you can ride it. You see it in your dreams; of course it will support your weight — it’s just a matter of balance after all, right?

But nay, that spinning brush will spin around and around, and wrap the cord around you, and eventually that cord will pull taught and then eject itself from the wall, and leave you there, dizzy and confused like that time you woke up in Tijuana with no memory other than that one last drink with your friends before putting on the rubber cheetah suit or whatever.

But that’s entirely another story.

Characters

  • Trainee Nikki Donner
  • Drill Sergeant Low

Locations

  • Ft. Jackson, South Carolina

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