The experience of joining the military in any branch is as unique as it is fraught with strange sights and sounds. The “Duck Walk” you are forced to do in your underwear at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) is among the most ubiquitous and ridiculous.

MEPS is essentially a medical office, usually near an airport, full of weirdo doctors that are presumably there because they enjoy examining the buttholes of 18-24 year old enlistees. To be fair, that’s probably a pretty sweet gig for a doctor compared to most (geriatric gynecology, anyone?) but it makes for a strange sendoff for the people joining.

During your visit at MEPS, you’ll be stripped down to your underwear, slam your knees on the cold, hard ground, duck walk with no idea if you’re doing it right, and bend over in front of an 85 year old and spread your cheeks. The butthole examining is, apparently, essential to military service in the United States. Our national security depends on the clean buttholes of our nation’s finest young men and women.

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