Just remembered one of the horror ‘Careers Day’ assemblies at school where we all sat through a presentation from armed forces recruiting. At the end they asked for a show of hands who’d like to join the army and one dude raised his, it was his dream to join. The recruiter made

him stand up (off the floor, we were not in chairs) so he could assess him physically in front of everyone(!). He was slim, average height, no vision impairment. But he had the absolute worst acne in the entire year. The recruiter CALLED HIM OUT for having acne and said the army

wouldn’t take somebody with acne that bad. And that was that. No suggestion on how to get around it. Just brutal and public rejection. It was awful. We literally watched his dreams die. Even in the hell of late 90s public high school I don’t recall anybody being gleeful about it.

Except maybe the recruiter. Dude was literally the only person who even raised his hand. I wonder what happened to him. Did we get accutane in time for him?

I don’t know what the army recruiting here is like now but that was fucked up. I hope he’s now happy somewhere.