 Oh my gosh, if I could count psych, I didn't cry at all. There was zero tears shed by me at BMT. Don't think I'm rude, but it was kind of funny, like watching other people cry or just like, not in a mean way, but it was like, they were talking, they were like all these tough guys, macho guys until they got a phone call for the first time and they were crying. I was talking to my mom, like, yeah, there's other people crying. It's not hard here and I'll see y'all in a few weeks. I cried a lot, yeah, I cried a lot and it was because I just missed home and I was super homesick. Am I homesick now? No, because I have my phone, I could video call, I could call my parents, I could call my friends. I could talk to anyone and I'm used to it now. But to answer your question, how many times did I cry at basic training? At least 20, it was really bad, but you get stronger because of it. I'd say two or three. I remember the first weekend I had a BMT going to service. That was very tough, missing my family, that was the first weekend I had my family layer and yeah, it was tough. There's some nights where I wanted to cry, but I told myself, you know, it's gonna pay off eighth week. Yeah, two or three times I definitely broke down and cried a little bit. I started tearing up once at BMT when I got a letter from my sister. Really? It was the first letter I got. I think I was about two weeks and it was when we got our first mail call. I heard my name called and it was from my sister and that's when I started tearing up a little bit, starting to miss my family. But after that first letter gets through you and you start sending letters out almost every other day or if you have family and friends in them to you, you'll get your name called two, three, four, five, six times during mail call and your MTIs will be like, whoa, what's happening? Why is he getting so much mail this, that? But if you have pretty chill MTIs, they'll understand about like where you're going through. They've done it too. So they know what it's like to get that mail when you get a mail call. It's like a little relief that you get. Every Sunday, every Sunday when I went to service, I would ball my eyes out. Why? Because there's a lot of anger. There's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of, oh, hate inside of you for the people around you that you just can't deal with. I'm not kidding. There's no like hate inside you, but you just don't really enjoy some of the things you have to do and just built inside you. But the first time I cried actually, MBMT was the first time we were outside the chow hall. We were waiting to go in and this was probably dinner chow and we had to turn to the side. So we did a left face to face the flag. And when the national anthem started playing, the first time it played that I heard it and we had to present arms, I balled my eyes. I cried, legit, I cried. I cried because I never thought I would be there. I never thought I would be in that position where I would be serving my country and I would be the one saluting the flag. It got to me. It got to me and it was not the first time it happened throughout multiple chows when we would be out there waiting and I would cry before going to eat. Other than that, every time that we practice drill and ceremony for the graduation and they will play that song, it's like, and I'm proud to be an American where at least I knew I'm free. I thought it was really good. Yeah, every time they play that song, I cry. I was like, I'm so proud. I'm so proud of being American. Yeah, BMT gets to you. It's like, you definitely get a little more emotional than usual and if you've never been there, like me, I've never experienced those levels of emotions. Kind of catches you by surprise, but at the end of the day, man, it is what it is. You're stuck there and if by crying a little bit makes you feel better, nobody really cares, dude. Nobody cares really if you're crying. Nobody cares. I gotta be honest, I cried once at BMT. This comes into play with being, how was it mentally hard? I was gonna say it wasn't, but I did cry once. My MTA during our off-time when we was just doing holding clothes, she played a motivational speech for us about mental toughness and listening to that speech, it actually broke me down because I thought I had that mental toughness to get through this, but at some point when she played it, I just broke down and cried because it really is hard mentally to be doing something like that even though you think you are prepared about it. Well, luckily, I didn't cry at all, surprisingly. Actually, not a lot of people in my flight did cry, but when we first got there, they give you the slip of paper and you're supposed to call your family member, whoever you choose, and you tell them your address, that you made it safe, and all that, and they asked, or somebody in my flight asked, what if they don't answer? Well, they told us that if they don't answer, you can just take a picture of it and send it to them. So me thinking, I don't wanna cry. It's our first day here. I decided just to take a picture of the paper, send it to my wife, and that would just save me and hurt some tears. But throughout the time, the phone calls that we get are actually, they're nice, like hanging up is sad, but getting to talk to them when you haven't talked to them in a while and hear their voice after weeks on end of not being able to have any communication with them is really nice, but I personally did not cry not once. I didn't cry at all, but I knew a couple of the guys in my flight that cried whenever they first got their phone calls or a letter of mail. I can definitely say I cried during that first phone call home. The first phone call, you only have five minutes, you have to go off a script. You can't go off the script at all. And you just feel really bad. I felt horrible being so short with my stepmom. They're asking me how things are going. I'm just like, here's my address, grab a pen. And then you can hear the MTIs in the background yelling at us to hang up the phone. I think everyone in my flight cried during that first phone call home. I definitely cried during the gas chamber, for sure. And then I think I cried out of frustration maybe two other times. I guess I would say four times total during BMT. Zero. So I cried zero times during basic military training. There's definitely nothing wrong if you do cry. If you catch yourself about to cry, don't try to hold it in. I mean, just let it out. Because if you go ahead and leave all those emotions in, it's gonna be really detrimental to your performance. But I didn't cry too much. Like I said, I was mentally prepared beforehand. I understood that I would be missing my family. I understood that there was gonna be strict rules and discipline, but you just have to go ahead and adapt. I definitely did get really close to crying on graduation. You hear, you know, God bless America by Lee Greenwood and you see all the friends and family around giving you support. So it definitely does bring a little sparkle to your eye, but I did not cry once in basic military training.