Noodle

When I was in basic, some of the firing ranges had deep foxholes, with pallets as steps for us to be high enough to get elbows over the edges. Most of them came about to my chin, standing on the sandy bottom, concrete around. Getting in was easy, if a bit uncomfortable. Getting out, a trial. Especially since push-ups were a new thing for us, and the muscles were straining to recover from being shoved into hard service. None of us had much upper body strength yet. And we'd gotten immunization shots by the dozens, in our upper arms.

Drill Sergeant Burrell was from the other platoon, same company. He picked me out the first week, since my glasses had photo grey lenses, and got pretty dark outside. He thought this made me look like John Lennon, and I became "John" to him from then on. Of all the names I was called, this one was just fine. I'd hear "John!" shouted, and I knew it was him. Burrell was a natural comedian. A rumor ran around that when a private carelessly pointed a rifle at him on a range, that he'd punched said private out, and was demoted. This made us like him more, of course. We all wanted to punch the one or two idiots who looked most likely to accidentally shoot someone because they couldn't follow simple instructions.

Burrell amused himself on the range by watching us struggling to pull ourselves out of these deep holes with our sore arms, and chanted, "Noodle arms, Noodle arms!" Even then, I found this terribly funny.

Last evening, the secondary impact areas have been lodging their complaints. Mostly triceps, upper back, range of motion is fine, but painful and lacking any strength. I use my arms a lot to support my poor ole back when I bend over, stand from a stoop. They are not up to these extra duties right now.

Noodle arms.