I actually had no choice, only the Army or the Marines would take me. I scored a 142 on the (1982) ASVAB, but I didn't have a high school diploma or even a GED at the time. I was 17 years old, and Reagan had taken my age 18-21 social security that my mom worked her whole life for and had given it to the rich folks, so college was suddenly not feasible for me, leaving me to choose between the army and a life of crime.
As it turns out, the Army wasn't bad at all. You have to work the system. I did 6 months on the Arizona State Honor Guard, where we got off work by 10 AM (and if we didn't, we were pissed), unless there was a funeral. If there was a funeral, then they paid us about $260/day extra. My AIT was eight months, and it was about as mellow as could be. Basic training was 2 months. So, there was 16 of the 48 months.
Grenada was eight more months. And while the mosquitoes sucked, and the Cubans sucked the first month, the rest of the time, the other seven months, was just hitting the beach, smoking fatties, and parties. *Very* little supervision. I grew my hair to shoulder length while I was in Grenada, and didn't get caught being a hippy until the very day I was leaving. (The lieutenant colonel in charge of the island caught me at the airport, but I was leaving, not much he could do really.)
Turkey was 14 months, and that was awesome. My work shift was 1 day on, 3 days off, so almost two 3-day weekends per week. That was the best work schedule I've had in my life on a consistent basis. Now we're up to 38 months out of the 48 that were either pretty cool or were simply educational. Cost of living in Turkey was amazing. I could buy a sack of groceries for $5, a shoeshine with a kid on each foot for a dime, a mansion (with a gardener and a maid who'd screw me three times a week) was $200/month. I accidentally bought 100 pounds of hamburger at the PX. I handed a worker a $20 bill and said I wanted all hamburger. I had done the math incorrectly, thinking that'd be 10 pounds. Nope, 100 pounds, 20 cents a pound. I put it all in a cart and gave away 80 or 90 pounds to random Turks on the way home.
Oh, the black markets in both Grenada and Turkey were extremely helpful to my wallet too. I made more money off that than the Army paid me. And I was bringing back about a pound a month of decent weed from Grenada (in resealed MRE bags). It cost me $120/pound to buy it in Grenada, and I sold it for $1280/pound at Fort Bragg. Cha ching! Army paychecks helped, but most of my income came from other activities.
During the transition time between Arizona Honor Guard and Turkey, I managed to trick my superiors into giving me about 4 consecutive months off work, like a gigantic paid vacation. What happened was, I broke my wrist when I took a 3-wheeler off a small cliff while drunk one night. I couldn't carry the caskets or be part of the 21 gun salute at the funerals, so they put me on six weeks of phone duty to finish off my Honor Guard stint. But when they released me, I didn't tell my superiors, and just lounged around in bed all day, telling people I was still part of Honor Guard.
Eventually, my sarge caught on, but by then I was within 30 days of leaving for leave before leaving for Turkey, so they gave me that month to outprocess. Then I took leave, but forgot to sign out. When I tried to sign in, the dude said, hmm, you never signed out on leave, so you can't sign in, so how about we just forget you took leave at all? Hah, yeah, couldn't argue with that, because that meant I got to take all that leave time *again*, later.
And that leaves, out of a 4-year duty, about 6 months of actual gritty work. The rest was just school, adventures in far off places, temporary duty, Honor Guard, or simply slack time that I squeezed out of them without them knowing what was going on.
The Army *can* suck, but if you're smarter than your 'superiors', you can really work the system and slack off and party most of the time, if that's what you want to do, and I did. I mean, 6 months of hard work out of 48 months is...12.5 percent. So, 87.5 percent of my Army time was more on my terms than theirs. Not bad!