This is hopefully my last “Plebe Summer” post, though depending on how long this pandemic lasts I reserve the right to circle back around.

The story I should have actually told by now in my Plebe Summer series is that I was dating another Plebe at the time. This has gotta be fairly unique. Sure, you meet a lot of people over Plebe Summer, but it’s not exactly a great time to meet someone.

Let’s call her K. I was in love. I was in love with that teenage love that made her seem like she was the only part of the world really in focus. We had started dating in High School. We were in the same program, and it was a small program, so we knew each other. Senior year I finally asked her out and she accepted. We didn’t start dating because of our mutual desire to go to the Naval Academy, but I guess having mutual interests doesn’t hurt. Like the majority of women in my life, she was much more dedicated and organized and tenacious than me, and she had been much more successful far earlier in the application process than I was, and was accepted way before I was. We talked briefly at one point about my backup plan if I didn’t get in, which consisted entirely of hitchhiking to Florida, stealing a sailboat, and going to the Caribbean.

Thankfully, I did eventually of course get in. The first thing I did was drive to K’s place to show her my acceptance packet. That was a good day. So we knew we had the rest of the semester together, and our short summer, and then it was off to the Academy. We didn’t plan on seeing each other much over the summer. You don’t want to draw a lot of attention to yourself as a Plebe, and having another Plebe as a girlfriend would have been a pretty big way to go about doing that. We also didn’t think it would work, or maybe it would just be suspicious, to send letters directly to each other, so we planned on sending them to our respective parents, who would then forward them to us. I think we only did that once. She also managed to get a note passed to me via some mutual contacts, and we wound up being able to see each other about once a week.

You know I was about to write “in a lot of ways it was nice to have a girlfriend going through Plebe Summer with you.” On reflection I don’t know if that was true. I was going to say that it was nice to have someone who knew what you were going through. But then again everyone I knew at that point knew what I was going through. I guess one advantage is that she, specifically, knew what I was going through, so I didn’t get the breakup letter some other people got. But I think I was probably a burden on her, and the relationship, or rather the existence of the relationship, probably mostly worked to feed my ego. We (I) managed to keep our relationship a secret for about half of Plebe Summer, I think. We wound up being able to see each other on most Sundays, because the Chaplains hosted a thing on Sunday mornings where they served donuts and Cadre weren’t allowed in. So we met up there, though sometimes I worried about shining my shoes and cut our time short. We’d also occasionally run into each other during PT or events like that. Later in the summer, when I was getting dangerously brave, I even wandered up to her room.

I was the one that let our secret out of the bag. I was stupid man. All Plebes are stupid, the act of becoming a Plebe makes you stupid, but I was stupider than most in a lot of ways, as I have mentioned. It was breakfast one morning and our Squad Leader decided to ask us all where our girlfriends were. So we were going around the table shouting (Plebes are always required to shout) various towns. I could have just said “Annapolis,” which was technically true and also very reasonable because I was local. Instead I got the bright idea to shout “SIR FOXTROT COMPANY SIR.” I still regret doing that. I mean at the time it fed my ego but the poor woman was just trying to fit in as a Plebe and not make waves and there I went blowing our secret out of the water. Man I was dumb. In some ways letting the secret out was nice. I remember during the Plebe Boxing Smoker I was allowed slash forced to go over and hang out with her and her squad. It was nice to see her, though again all I was really doing was attracting attention.

I don’t know if Plebe Summer was good or bad for the relationship. It probably wasn’t great? I thought about her a lot. At some point I thought it would be romantic to write her a letter that mostly consisted of the lyrics to a particular marching cadence, but thankfully I came to my senses before I wrote that out. That note she got passed to me was actually a note saying that we should talk, because she intended to break up with me. For better or for worse, by the time the note got to me and we could steal away for a tête-à-tête, she had changed her mind. Plebe Summer just changes you so much that we were really two new people figuring out who we were and who we were in relation to each other. Since in a lot of ways you change in the same direction it can kind of cover that up. The first time we got to spend any real amount of time together was Plebe Parent’s weekend, when we finally got some liberty. We of course went home and hung out with each other there. But we both refused to wear anything other than the proscribed PT gear, and kept our shirts tucked in, in accordance with the uniform regulations.

We survived Plebe Summer as a couple, and the rest of Plebe Year. We technically lived in the same building, though in different wings, and were busy enough that we would go days without seeing each other. She would eventually dump me early on in Youngster Year, and rightfully so. She hasn’t talked to me since.