To be sure, weather forecasts can change and cool. But if I were a lad in the uniform of the armed services, I’d sure be hoping that the orders to report for the president’s day of self-adoration  would spare me.

Eons ago I was such a lad, unspared: lined up on a side runway at Schilling Air Force Base in Salina, Kansas, with several hundred other trainees, standing at parade rest under the same pitilessly bright sun. Even in our supposedly lightweight summer khakis, it was an ordeal: the waves of heat shimmered around us like silently shrieking demons, making the large hangars tremble in our vision, and we felt the heat reflecting up, melting the polish off our newly-shined shoes.

What ceremony it was I have forgotten; surely no ego larger than a colonel —  likely doing penance for some bureaucratic misstep —  was in charge.

Anyway, the main event, glimpsed sidelong as we stood, was counting the number of airmen and my fellow ROTC cadets who withered and keeled over onto the white concrete pavement during the droning ceremonies, to be retrieved by a busy first aid squad, carried into the blessed hangar shade, and revived with water and salt tablets.

I wasn’t the first, or second among them, but soon enough the vertigo arrived and I sagged. There was no real shame to it; we weren’t there vying to be Green Berets. By that night, one of us had recovered enough repurpose a song from the movie West Side Story as our impromptu getaway anthem. It was a refrain from “Maria”, as crooned by the lovestruck Tony (Richard Beymer) in the film: Maria, I’ll never stop saying Mariaaaah. . .”

Which scanned perfectly as

Revised ”Sa-li-na,

I’ll never come back to Sa-li-naaaa.”

Sure enough, I never did.

Overall, our Schilling crucible was over in a couple of hours: we marched briskly out to it, unencumbered by extra equipment, and then shuffled back, damp and weary. But the 9000 men, women (and any daring disguised trans) warfighters on June 14 will not be so lucky. They’ll be coming in early, bunking up in government buildings, up and out early for setting up and assembling, a long day in heavy uniforms, costumes and weapons. Then afterward, breaking down, cleaning up and clearing out.

The  clanking equipment list for the event is a rolling mass pothole production line, many  kinds of tanks, big artillery, horses and a mule, with numerous planes zooming over, fifty-plus helicopters, and an exhibition parachute team skydiving down to deliver a gold-plated American flag to Trump in person. (Okay, I made up the gold-plated part.)