Back then I was in 12th grade, during the 2021 - 2022 school year. By the time summer 2022 rolled around, I had already secured a scholarship at university, so my final months of high school felt much less brutal than they did for a lot of my friends. They were deep in exam pressure. I was still taking things seriously, but I also had enough breathing room to get dragged into slightly stranger experiences.
Part of that came from my parents both working at the same high school. When I was a toddler, they obviously could not just leave me at home all the time, so I got brought to school a lot. Some teachers had free periods in the teachers' room, and apparently toddler me managed to win over an unreasonable number of them.
So from their point of view, it was a little funny: one small child they used to play with disappeared for years. During my middle-school stretch, roughly from ten to fifteen, I was basically nowhere to be found around that campus. Then I suddenly came back as a taller, older student with exam season around the corner. It was never some absurd teacher-pet situation. They just paid more attention to me, and some of them genuinely wanted me to experience things beyond normal classroom life.
One of those things was a yearly national-defense competition (hội thao quốc phòng) held in Vinh Long. I think the Department of Education organized it with military support somewhere in the mix, but I never got the full bureaucratic breakdown because, to be honest, I was too busy thinking wait, I get to do what?
There were a bunch of events:
- Armed running in full gear
- Grenade throwing
- An obstacle-course section I no longer remember the official name of
- Formation drill
- Theory knowledge, which was basically a multiple-choice exam
- And the one everyone cared about most: live-fire shooting
I ended up joining the theory section, the formation drill, and the live-fire AK event. Which, to be clear, was exactly as dramatic as it sounds.
We had around a month to train beforehand. At school there was a computer-connected practice rifle setup that tracked your aim through a camera system, so most of our shooting prep happened there. It was useful, but it still had one obvious limitation: the training rifle was not actually going to explode in your hands when you pulled the trigger.
The real event lasted around three days. We left school and went to a military school in Vinh Long, the kind of place that immediately feels more serious just because of the setting. There was an outdoor shooting range and, yes, a giant sand dune behind it like the world's least subtle safety net.
See the range on the map
Then came the best part.
The live-fire section meant using a real AK-47. Not a model. Not a simulator. A real one, with three real bullets, at a 100-meter target.
Now, I am not dumb. I knew even back then that this was not exactly a normal high-school experience. That probably made the whole thing even cooler.
The supervisor, who I noticed was a dai uy from the badge on his uniform, handed me the rifle and a magazine with exactly three rounds. Then I moved into position while another supervisor stood right next to me. Which made perfect sense. There was absolutely no reason any adult should fully trust a teenager holding that thing for the first time.
My teacher had taught me the basic routine already: hold your breath, settle your aim, and squeeze the trigger slowly instead of yanking it like an idiot. I had practiced that part in my head and with the training setup more times than I could count.
But theory becomes a lot less theoretical when the weapon in your hands can actually kill someone.
So there I was, lying in the shooting position, adrenaline going insane, pulling the trigger millimeter by millimeter and waiting for the moment it would go off. That was the sneaky part. There was no dramatic warning. No little click. No ready?
from the rifle itself.
It was just me, slowly pulling, waiting for something to happen.
Then: bang.
No warning. No countdown. Just noise, recoil, and my nervous system briefly leaving the building.
The recoil was not unmanageable because we were shooting from the prone position, but it still jumped hard enough to feel like a fish the size of an AK trying to escape my hands.
There was also one extra inconvenience: even though I am right-handed, I have never been good at closing my left eye properly. So I ended up shooting left-handed instead. Since most people on the range were right-handed and we were all lying next to each other, our feet kept bumping into each other in a way that somehow made the whole scene feel even more absurd.
And yes, I did hit the target. All three rounds landed as sevens, and they were actually pretty close to each other too, which I am still willing to count as a personal victory.
That said, some other guy somehow pulled a perfect 10, 10, 10, and to this day I still do not know how the hell he did that.
I am probably not the best person alive at telling shooting stories, but that moment stayed with me because of how surreal it felt.
A few weeks before graduation, while most of my friends were memorizing formulas and living in exam mode, I was out there trying to stay calm behind a real rifle.
Not many people get to say that about their last high-school summer.
It was loud, weird, a little intimidating, and honestly unforgettable.