The New Recruit

by Jocko Willink

  “Okay,” he said. There was a long pause after he said this. Part of my mind thought that “Okay” meant “Okay, I’ll get this bike for you, young Marc, because you are such a great kid!” But part of me thought he might have more to say—and it wasn’t going to be what I wanted to hear. And that part turned out to be correct. He did have more to say, and it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Then you will have to earn it.”

  “‘Earn it’?” I said.

  “Yes. Earn it. You see, you don’t even really understand what that means. As a kid, your parents pretty much give you everything. Your food. Your clothes. Your bed. The roof over your head. Even this rusty bike right here. And when you are given things for free, you don’t appreciate their value—what they’re worth. You don’t appreciate that someone worked hard to get the money to buy you that bike. When you don’t appreciate something, you don’t take care of it. That’s what happened with this bike here. Right?”

  Uncle Jake was correct. I hadn’t ever really thought about that. “Yes, Uncle Jake. That’s what happened.”

  “Okay, then. So if you want that new Bentlee bike, you are going to earn it. Understand?”

  I thought about this for a second—and realized I didn’t understand. “Actually, Uncle Jake, I don’t understand. I’m a kid. I don’t have a job. How can I earn it?”

  “Two ways. First, you are going to fix up this bike. Not only are you going to get it working again, you are going to make it nice so you can sell it to earn some money. And second, you are going to get a job. There is no reason a healthy kid like you can’t find a way to make money.”

  “Doing what?” I asked, not sure if this was the most realistic plan in the world. I was a kid, for crying out loud!

  “Doing work,” Uncle Jake replied. “Now, let’s go get cleaned up.”

  And with that, we walked out of the garage and back to the house. It seemed like my whole summer just changed.

  CHAPTER 6: TROUBLE AGAIN

  Today was the first day of camp at the rec center and it was AWFUL!

  First of all, I had to leave my house at 7:30 a.m. to walk there. Since I had to leave at 7:30 a.m., it meant I had to get up EVEN EARLIER than normal to work out. I asked Uncle Jake if I could skip the morning workout because I had to go to camp. You know what he said? “No.” That’s it! “No.” So I woke up early and worked out with Uncle Jake—and I have to admit, I felt better when I was done, like I always do.

  Then I had to walk to the rec center. And, yes, I said WALK because, if you remember, I DON’T HAVE A BIKE! I was pretty much the ONLY KID WALKING. Almost every other kid rode a bike. There were even two kids with the Bentlee bike! And I had NOTHING!

  So I was already not in a good mood when I got there. Then who is the first person that actually talks to me at the camp? Nathan James! And you know what he says? He says, “How was the last day of school, troublemaker?” Nathan James! Calling ME a troublemaker! I WAS MAD.

  But I remembered Uncle Jake telling me that warriors don’t lose control of their emotions and that they definitely don’t lose their tempers.

  So I tried to calm myself down. “The last day of school was okay,” I told Nathan plainly, hoping he would just leave me alone.

  “I had fun,” he said with a big smile on his face, knowing that I DID NOT HAVE FUN on the last day of school.

  I didn’t even answer. But I started getting mad. REALLY MAD. I was thinking that if he said ONE MORE THING TO ME, I was going to go CRAZY. I could feel my face turning redder and redder and my hands starting to clench into fists.

  Then suddenly a voice said, “Good morning, kids. Come on over here and let’s get you signed in.” It was one of the camp counselors getting all the kids to come sign in for the day.

  Nathan said, “Sure,” smiled his annoying little smile at me, and walked away. I was fuming! I could barely even move.

  A different counselor looked at me and said, “Are you okay, kid? Go over there and sign in.”

  I wasn’t okay. I was mad. But I walked over to the sign-in desk and put my signature next to my name. I could barely even write, I was so mad!

  For the rest of the day, we did a bunch of activities. We did some art, which I am pretty good at, so that was okay. Then we played baseball, which I am NOT GOOD AT, and it was not fun.

  Every time I got up to bat, I could feel Nathan looking at me, staring at me with his stupid smile. I hated it! And it kept getting worse, because I struck out EVERY TIME. And every time I swung and missed, I could hear Nathan say, “Good one, champ!” or “Nice swing, champ,” or “A swing and a miss!” He was talking just loud enough that I could hear him but quiet enough that the counselors could not hear him.

  AAAHHHHHHHHHH! It was driving me crazy. And the madder I got, THE WORSE I DID.

  Then, after the millionth time I swung and missed, I heard Nathan say, “Another good one, champ!” from way in the outfield.

  That was it. I yelled at the top of my lungs:

  Now this might not have been too big of a deal, but it was one of those moments where everything got quiet just as I started to yell, so everyone heard exactly what I said. On top of that, because I was so mad, it was the LOUDEST YELL EVER, and since I was so mad, everyone could tell I was mad!

  “Hey!” one of the counselors shouted. “Get over here.” I walked over to the counselor, who was sitting on the side of the field. “Come with me.” He walked me away from the field and brought me to the rec center office. “I don’t know what your problem is, but you can’t act like that here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, and I was, too. I knew I shouldn’t have acted that way. “But that kid was calling me names and making fun of me all morning.”

  “I don’t care what he was calling you,” the counselor said, “and you shouldn’t care what someone calls you, either. If you have another outburst like that again, I’m going to have to call your parents. You understand me?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! This was the second time in a week that I had been in trouble because of NATHAN JAMES. I couldn’t stand him.

  Then, as I sat there and thought about it, I had an idea. An idea that would solve this problem once and for all: I would fight him. I knew jiu-jitsu, and I knew I could beat him in a fight. So I would fight him and shut him up once and for all! I suddenly started to feel better.

  You see, I figured out right then and there that Nathan was pretty much like Kenny Williamson last year in school, but instead of bullying people by pushing them around, Nathan is a bully with his words. But his words seem to hurt just as bad as getting punched in the face!

  When I stood up to Kenny Williamson, he realized that he shouldn’t act the way he was acting. If I fought Nathan, he would learn the same lesson: that if you treat people badly, there are consequences.

  I would teach Nathan that lesson.

  CHAPTER 7: RED FLARES

  When I got home, I decided I would tell Uncle Jake about everything that happened today. I figured he would be proud that I had decided to fight Nathan. Boy, was I wrong.

  “How did it go at camp today?” Uncle Jake asked me.

  “Not good,” I replied.

  “Not good? Why not?” he asked.

  I explained everything that happened. What Nathan said when I first saw him. How horrible baseball was, but how it was even worse because of Nathan making fun of me. How mad I got. What I yelled and how I yelled it, and how I got in trouble with the counselor.

  And, you know, I thought that Uncle Jake might have thought this was kind of cool. At least a little bit. At least the part when I yelled back at Nathan and called him an idiot.

  I also thought there was a chance that Uncle Jake might be mad at me for getting in trouble. After all, he had already picked me up from the office at school and wasn’t happy about me getting in trouble then, so I thought this might make him REALLY mad.

  But when I finished telling him the whole story, I couldn’t tell if he thought it wa
s cool or if he was mad at me. He just sat there quietly for a few seconds. Then he finally said, “I guess you didn’t understand what I told you the other day about controlling your emotions, did you?”

  “What?” I asked him, since I didn’t remember at all what he was talking about.

  “Your emotions. The other day when I picked you up from school and you were angry and frustrated and crying, I explained to you that those were emotions you need to control, because when people don’t control their emotions, they make bad decisions. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, Uncle Jake. I remember.”

  “Then why did you act emotional again today? Why did you get in trouble? Why did you give Nathan the satisfaction of knowing that he got into your head and made you lose control?”

  Sheesh! With all those questions, Uncle Jake just made me feel like I was a big baby. But it wasn’t as easy as he made it sound.

  “But Nathan is SO ANNOYING! He gets under my skin with the little things he says, and the way he acts makes me so mad. And today I stayed calm at first, but he just kept talking and talking and making fun of me and I just … I just…”

  “You lost control.” Uncle Jake finished my sentence. “You lost control of your emotions.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did, Uncle Jake.”

  “And look at what happened and what you did when you lost control of your emotions. You performed worse at baseball. You let Nathan know how much he was bothering you. And you got in trouble. All those outcomes are bad. On top of those, Nathan probably feels like he won. He was trying to annoy you—and he succeeded. When you yelled back at him and got in trouble, he was laughing. He had accomplished his mission. By getting emotional, you let him win.”

  I understood what Uncle Jake was trying to say, but I still didn’t understand how to actually control my emotions, like he was saying. “I get it, Uncle Jake. But it’s not that easy. When he says all those things, it isn’t like I choose to get mad at him. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it. It just happens. How am I supposed to stop it?”

  “Good question, Marc,” Uncle Jake said. “Let me ask you this: When you start to get mad, what do you notice about yourself?”

  “What do I notice? I don’t really notice anything—I’m too busy being mad!” I told him.

  “No. I’m not talking about when you are mad. I’m talking about before you’re mad. When you are starting to get mad. What do you notice then?”

  “Well. I start to feel kind of hot.”

  “Okay. That’s what a lot of people feel when they are getting mad. What else?”

  “I feel like my face is turning red.”

  “Okay. That’s very common. What else?”

  “When I’m really starting to get mad, I squeeze my hands into fists, like I am ready to fight!”

  “Yep,” Uncle Jake said. “Those are all normal responses and what people feel when they are starting to get mad. Those are red flares that tell you there is an emergency—that you are losing control of your emotions.”

  “Red flares? What is a red flare?”

  “A red flare is a universal signal for an emergency. If you are in a boat that is sinking, you can send up a red flare and people will know you need help. If you are lost in the woods, you can set off a red flare. Even in the SEAL Teams, when we were on an operation and there was a problem and we couldn’t get help through our radios, we would fire off a red flare as an alert that we needed help. So a red flare is a signal that help is needed. When you start feeling hot or feeling your face turn red or you feel yourself clenching your fists, then that is a signal to yourself that you need help. You need to get control of your emotions.”

  “Are all emotions bad?”

  “No! Not at all. Emotions are good. They make you who you are. They allow you to feel. Happiness and gratitude are good. Joy and excitement are good. Love is a good emotion. So is satisfaction—when you feel like you have accomplished something. Those are all good emotions, but even good emotions need to be controlled. You already know it isn’t smart to celebrate with joy before you actually accomplish a goal. Even emotions you might think are bad aren’t bad—emotions like anger, fear, and frustration. They also make you who you are. But you have to learn how to make sure those emotions don’t get out of control. Because, as a warrior, those emotions can cause you to make mistakes or bad decisions, and in war, bad decisions can cost lives. So warriors have to keep their emotions under control.”

  “Well, I learned how to deal with my fear last summer when I jumped off Bird Bridge,” I told Uncle Jake.

  “You certainly did. So you know you can do it. You can control your emotions. And in order to do that, the first thing you have to be able to do is recognize what your red flares are.”

  “What do red flares have to do with emotions?” I asked Uncle Jake.

  “I’m not talking about actual red flares. Like I said, a red flare is used in many places as a warning—a warning against some kind of danger. But in this case, red flares are signals that show you are in danger of losing your temper.”

  “Signals? What kinds of signals could tell me that?” I asked.

  “The signals you just told me about. Feeling hot. Turning red. Feeling your hands squeezing into fists. Those are all signals telling you that you are about to lose your temper—and once that happens, you can get your emotions under control.”

  “How do I do that? Just because I know the emotions are coming doesn’t mean I can stop them!” I told Uncle Jake.

  “No. I didn’t say you could stop them. But you can definitely get them under control.”

  “Okay. Then how do I get them under control?”

  “There are a bunch of things you can do. First of all, remember that losing control of your emotions is what babies do and that warriors keep themselves calm. You have to detach from those emotions—step back from them a little so they don’t control you. You can do that by taking a deep breath and telling yourself to calm down. Or try thinking about something else, something that doesn’t make you feel frustrated. If none of that works and you simply cannot calm yourself down, then just walk away. You don’t have to be rude or anything when you do that, either. You just say ‘Excuse me,’ and walk away. Get yourself away from the situation that is making you lose control. That will hopefully calm you down by actually detaching you from what is happening. And even if it doesn’t calm you down, at least you got away from the place where losing your temper might get you into some kind of trouble. Does this make sense to you?” Uncle Jake asked.

  It actually did. “Yes, Uncle Jake. It makes sense. Warrior Kids should not be losing their tempers. So I need to look for ‘red flares,’ which are warning signs that tell me I’m losing my temper, like getting hot or turning red. I get it. And I will definitely try to watch for the red flares. Because my emotions seem to keep getting me into trouble.”

  “Yes, they do, Marc. Yes, they do,” Uncle Jake said. “And it is time to get them under control.”

  “I will, Uncle Jake. I will.”

  CHAPTER 8: BUSINESS OWNER

  So today was Saturday. What does a normal kid do on Saturday? Maybe sleep in, relax, watch some TV?

  Nope. Not for me. Today was hard work, but it was also AWESOME.

  First, Uncle Jake and I got up and did a really cool workout. We did ten pull-ups, then a sprint to the end of the driveway and back, and then twenty push-ups and another sprint to the end of the driveway and back. We did that ten times. And even though Uncle Jake did it faster than me, I still DID IT!

  When we got done with the workout, Uncle Jake had me bring my old, rusty bike into the garage. Then we got out my dad’s tools, and Uncle Jake told me, “Okay. Now take it apart.”

  “Take what apart?” I asked him.

  “The bicycle,” he told me.

  “What part of it should I take apart?” I asked.

  “All of it,” Uncle Jake said.

  “All of it?”

  “Yes. All of it. This whole bike n
eeds to be cleaned up and have the rust removed, and some parts need to get oiled up. So, yes. All of it.”

  “Okay,” I told Uncle Jake as he handed me a wrench and pointed to the front tire. I took the wrench from him and began to take off the front tire. It was pretty rusted up, but I cranked hard on the wrench and eventually it came loose on one side. But the other side wouldn’t budge.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t take care of things,” Uncle Jake said as he handed me a spray bottle. “Spray some of that on there and let it soak for a few minutes,” he continued. I followed his instructions, sprayed it on, and let it sit for a few minutes. Then I tried again, and it came off.

  “Get the pedals off next,” he said.

  So I took off the pedals, then the seat and the chain guard before taking off the back tire and the chain and finally the brakes. As I took off each piece, Uncle Jake had me put it on the floor in a very specific place— basically putting each part of the bike on the ground close to where it would be if the bike were assembled but lying on its side. When I finally set the brake parts down on the ground, I was done.

  “Okay. Now what?” I asked Uncle Jake.

  “Now you have to remove all the rust from all of these parts and prime them for paint,” he said.

  “Okay … but how?” I asked.

  “Well, there is your first problem. You see, your dad doesn’t have all the right tools for this job. You need a wire brush and some metal sandpaper. And when you are done removing the rust, you will need some primer paint and some colored paint for the paint job. You are going to need to buy those.”