My first taste of the dreaded army 'extras' came as a sergeant after we earned our berets. As they say, bad things come in threes and I found this to be true - the hard way.
As a cadet in BMT, I always thought that it would be a tedious task to clock up these 'extras' and constantly ridiculed my older friends who had managed this. Mr Karma was obviously having a field day when he decided to let me have a dose of the fine medicine known as Haha.
So we had just ended yet another outfield exercise and I was given the job of checking if the rifles were clear. "Easy enough," I thought. After all, most of us were pretty experienced at clearing our own weapons by then and it really was just a follow-through-motion thing.
Anyway, Teng Siang comes along and requests that I check his weapon and I, being the somewhat reluctant sergeant, have no choice but to agree. So he cocks the weapon and I stuff my finger into the hole and of course, my mouth was already trained to shout 'Clear!', and so I did. I think the psychologists call this 'muscle memory' while most of us know it as 'gey chua'. Whichever it is, our unit kinda excels in it. We tend to be professionals in everything....even stupid stuff.
What happened next was perhaps the most shocking thing that I have had ever experienced. BANGGG!! The stillness which followed was surreal and I swear that you could have heard a pin drop. It didn't help that our OC, Cpt Seah, was a metre away from me. He smiled and sorta gave me that you-know-what-to-do look, which to be fair to me, I didn't. Was it supposed to be "ok, we'll keep mum" or "sign extra"? How do you actually tell what Cpt Seah means when he smiles? I mean, he does that for everything!
In any case, I duly got three extras for that and Teng Siang got one. That was my virgin experience with the whole 'extras' fad and since the floodgates were open, definitely not my last. In fact, I had gotten a total of 10 'extras' during my entire army career with an addition of a punishment of '40 good deeds'. Certainly nothing I was proud of but looking back, think it benefited me a little.
I now have a little street cred and am able to engage in discussions amongst people when they do talk about their 'extras'.
Those of ya'll who didn't serve any extras feeling left out now right?
Share your extras story!
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