Johnny Cirucci

Johnny considers himself to be a "jack of all trades, master of none...OK, maybe one or two." Having grown up in a middle-class family, Johnny had a troubled life with an abusive father. His school days were filled with great promise, great imagination and little results. Able to achieve some modest success in high school football, Johnny still preferred the company of the "geeks" and "rejects". As he began to look towards his future, Johnny became infatuated with becoming a Marine. He aspired to attend the Naval Academy but couldn't stay focused enough to get the grades he needed. Settling for a college in the southwest (as far away from his northeast homelife as possible), Johnny began slogging through university with the same listlessness he did high school. However, Johnny's difficult family troubles caught up with him even there and he came up with the great idea of dropping out of college and enlisting in the Marine Corps. Unfortunately for Johnny, the gloves were off and reality soon hit him square in the face. Perceiving via his limited boot camp experience that the Marine Corps wasn't all it was cracked up to be, Johnny quickly found a way to separate from the military on not-so-best of terms. He returned home to find that his abusive father had left him, his brother and mother to pursue a new life with a woman Johnny's age. These were hard times for Johnny, who considered himself a total failure. Psychological counseling, prescription drugs, confusion and despair were the order of the day. After working several different jobs, Johnny felt he had reached a breaking point and his ambition burst onto the scene. He decided that it was time to finish what he had started. He picked himself up by his boot straps and indebted himself deeply to several banks and Uncle Sam in order to finish college in the far away state where he started. During this time, Johnny began looking in to a return to the Marine Corps but got one initial "Yes" and then a never-ending cavalcade of "NO!"s. Undeterred, Johnny continued to push for a second chance. While at college (the second time) Johnny made friends with someone who "coincidentally" lived near Johnny back home. The friend pushed and cajoled Johnny to come attend church with him. Johnny was a happily non-practicing Catholic, pleased to be free of the ritual and obligations. But Johnny's friend didn't play fair and trapped Johnny into thinking he would find a girlfriend at this church. Johnny didn't find a girl, but he did find God. The church was Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque, NM and it was not like what Johnny was used to. People were all touchy-feely, the place had a coffee shop and a book store and the preacher dude was a real "dude": tall blonde surfer from California named "Skip"! But he was good...real good. Johnny was mesmerized by Skip's ability to make the Bible come alive-a Book he was always interested in understanding but never could. For the first time in his life, Johnny went back to church voluntarily. After that fateful day (January 16th, 1994), Johnny's life began to turn around. He eventually came back east but not before making a miraculous breakthrough in his quest to return to Marine boot camp. At 27 years old, that is exactly what he did. Again, miraculously, finishing this time. Being an "old man", Johnny felt it was best to take his new "Marine" title and only use it part time, serving 4 years in the Reserve while still bouncing from job to job. Probably not the best course of action but maturity was having a tough time getting through to Johnny. After completing his 4 years, Johnny asked his sergeant if he could become an officer and go full time (having finally, at long last, earned his Bachelor Degree in the extremely useful field of "Political Science"). The response Johnny got could be likened to "age discrimination"-the military does that a lot. The game changed somewhat for Johnny after September 11th, 2001. Johnny was shocked by the events of that day (weren't we all) and began making phone calls to see if he would be needed to return to duty. To his surprise, the Marine Corps told Johnny they were doing fine. Johnny continued to struggle with his desire to serve his country until he decided that it was time to petition other services. They weren't quite so snobbish as the Marine Corps and Johnny was allowed to enter the Army via "Officer Candidate School". Johnny was very excited to have the Army pick up where the Marine Corps left off until Johnny found out that the "pick up" point was a bit farther down the road than he anticipated. Johnny saw the military as a place of excitement where he could do deeds of daring do. The Army? -Not so much. In spite of Johnny's storied service in the Marine Corps, Johnny was given the decidedly unglamorous job of going into the Field Artillery. Johnny was not a happy camper, uh, soldier. Johnny did 4 painful years in the Army and, rather than having accomplished feats of renown, would much rather sweep it all under the carpet. At least Uncle Sam provided Johnny with the stability to marry the cute girl he met on the internet (no, she wasn't mail-order from Russia). But the Army wasn't through with Johnny. They promised Johnny lots of money if Johnny would stay in but just go part time. Johnny decided the money looked very good to him and joined the part-time Army where he was very promptly told he would be going full time to Iraq. Johnny didn't like Iraq very much. There was lots of garbage and dirt and it messed with Johnny's Obsessive/Compulsive disorder. Many of the people Johnny got to see didn't like him very much and making friends in Iraq was hard. They were rude and even tried to wake him up Easter morning with fireworks. Johnny saw a lot of stray animals in Iraq and he didn't like that, either, because Johnny was getting soft towards animals. Johnny decided he needed to do something about it and even though all of the scary officers in charge of Johnny told him he wasn't allowed to be near or adopt any, he did anyway and, at great expense, brought his new battle buddy home with him. When Johnny came home, there was a new president who didn't like Johnny, or his country, very much. Seeing his country torn apart even more quickly than ever made Johnny mad. Johnny began to write about how mad he was and put it up on the internet.