I'm on the night shift at work for two weeks. It could be worse; I work 4 10 hour nights, and I'm taking vacation for 2 of them. Even so, I'm not a graveyard shift kinda guy, and I find it mildly annoying that I'm here to mitigate a dispute between two employees (one of whom is admittedly a huge douchebag and needs to be reprimanded). I'll go ahead and tell you that the night shift is not very busy and tends to drag, leaving ample time to do......whatever else you might need to do (such as post on your blog). So anyway, I get into the office and I start clicking through my work emails, 90% of which I read, take note of, and delete, and the other 10% I simply delete right away. When I get to the end of my furious deletions, I click on the trash bin and prepare to erase them forever when I notice one I hadn't read. It's from a friend who works in Admin. I open it and I'm greeted with "Hey John, you'll never guess what I found......check it out".
It's my casualty report, from when I was wounded in combat in 2004.
As soon as I saw it, a flood of emotions rushed over me. I hadn't seen this thing in over 5 years, and yet I could suddenly again taste the dust in my mouth, hear the roar of the explosion in my ears, and the frantic cries of the people rushing to our aid. I could remember, as clear as day, the disorientation as I struggled to my feet and helped the Corpsman pull Burgess to a standing position, his right shoulder covered in blood. I could feel the wall we were blasted through caving down upon us. I could remember wondering if I had been hit by shrapnel. I could remember wondering if I was going to die. Why did my friend send it to me? Not that I was angry or traumatized by seeing it. In fact, I'm well over it. So why the sudden barrage of images and emotions and sounds? In order for you to know, I need to take you back with me, 5 years ago.
It was May of 2004, on Mother's Day. I was a young LCpl in the middle of my first combat tour in Iraq. My Battalion had set up a little FOB (Forward Operating Base) about 10km south of Fallujah, in a small village called Zadan. The FOB had no official name, but we called it FOB Incoming or FOB Suicide. This was because of the fact that there was absolutely no cover and no place to take refuge from the constant barrage of rockets and mortars we recieved on a daily basis. Sometimes the number was high as 12 or 13. We had been there for about 2 weeks at this point and morale was.......well, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't exactly optimistic, either. Just days before, GySgt Ronald Baum had been killed by a direct rocket hit, and those that worked with him (myself included) were still badly shaken by his death. There was absolutely no going anywhere without wearing your flak, kevlar, throat protector, the whole nine yards. We even wore our gear as we slept.
That morning, I had been tapped for guard duty at the front gate of our small compound, along with another LCpl named Burgess. He was a nice kid, a bit younger than me, and we got along well. We all shared the burden of guard duty during our time there. We were standing near the front gate behind our concrete barriers talking about how much alcohol were going to need upon our return home, when a massive explosion rocket the outer wall across from us. We were immediately able to guess that it was an RPG round (we were later proven right) and dashed back into the compound, turning to draw down with our M16's once we were behind the HESCO barriers. (A HESCO is basically a big square sandbag that comes up to about your mid-torso). As we were turning, the world suddenly became nothing but noise and sand as a 107mm rocket slammed into the ground not 10 feet in front of us, lifting both of us off our feet and right through a stucco-alabaster wall with no ceiling, which had been right behind us. We landed hard and the wall came tumbling down on top of us, and as it did I could discern two things: Burgess shouting that he had been hit, and that fact that I could hear nothing in my right ear.
A Navy Corpsman was the first to get there and pulled me upright. I did my best to help drag Burgess to his feet, a large chunk of shrapnel protruding from his right shoulder. I'm not sure how much I actually did help, but hey, I tried. We were both ushered to one corner of the FOB, at which the Corpsmen worked to remove the shrapnel from Burgess's shoulder and tried to determine how much hearing I had lost. As it turned out, we were both ok: Burgess would suffer no lasting damage from his wounds, and I was not deaf. However, the BN Surgeon correctly predicted that I would face significant hearing loss over the following years (in fact, a recent physical showed that I scar tissue in my right ear had deteriorated further, and I could expect to need a hearing aid within a few short years). My saving grace had been that my ears were dirty. Had they been clean, I would have been put on a chopper headed for Germany and the Hospital.
So what was the fallout? We went back later and examined the HESCO that we had been standing behind to discover large, jagged pieces of shrapnel embedded into the cloth. Had we stopped running on the other side, just one foot forward, it would have torn both of us in half. Burgess and I rested for a day or two and we returned to our duties. We were in the middle of a war, after all, and every man counted. Although my hands shook for the next two weeks and I couldn't hear out of my right ear for four, I was none the worse for wear. Burgess recieved the Purple Heart, obviously. I was denied my Purple Heart by Congress because "despite a debilitating injury for which I would feel the effects over a lifetime, I had not actually shed blood". My Company Commander and my father were livid and both wrote their congressmen, but that was that. In hindsight, I don't really care anymore, as no one goes into combat hoping they'd be wounded. But that was the reason that my friend had emailed my CASREP to me, because I was listed by the DoD to this day as WIA (wounded in action), yet I had no Purple Heart to my name. My friend wanted me to write a letter to Congress and ask for an overturn of their decision. And as much as I appreciated the thought, I deleted the email and declined. Why? A smartass answer would be that I have little desire to ask anything of the current administration. But for a truly honest answer, I would refer you to a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson I came across on a day from which I have happy memories, which has come to give me great comfort:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust
So near is God to man
When Duty whispers low, Thou must
The youth replies, I can.
I leave it to you to determine what I mean.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Old school sarcasm rules once more!
I just feel like randomly venting!
We don't listen to warning labels, and I can prove it. On every pack of cigarettes, it TELLS YOU IT'S GOING TO KILL YOU. This isn't a warning label on a plastic bag that was written by some asshole at the plastic bag factory. The warning on cigarettes comes from the Surgeon General. Cigarettes give you black lungs, shortness of breath, yellow teeth, your clothes smell like something you spilled on the stove, and then you die coughing forty years before your friends. You can ignore advice from non-surgeons. Well the Surgeon General is a doctor. In fact, they're the supreme commander of doctors. If doctors were to start a war against the bowlers or the bird watchers, the Surgeon General would have the biggest hat and stand at the back of the army shouting, "Hold the line, men! Take two of these FISTS and call me in the morning!" Read the pack of cigarettes. If the Surgeon General tells you something might kill you and give your future kids extra toes and eyes, listen to him. Do you need a warning from the Surgeon Jesus before you start taking advice?
And trust me, if the world isn't listening to life-or-death advice from the Surgeon General, they're going to ignore the shit out of the fine print on a plastic bag. In fact, if through some tragic accident you end up looking through a Skymall catalog, people are selling plastic bags that you wear over your head. For fire safety. Because the best way to deal with a fiery death is to distract yourself with a smaller, stupider crisis.
The non-smoking commercials are actually funded by the company that makes cigarettes. It's like they're taunting us. Are they flash-framing subliminal messages at us? How can half the country smoke when the only thing on my TV is lists of tobacco death statistics. We know more about what cigarette does to the human body than than anyone knows about anything else. They have to be mocking us. One of the commercials actually says "Tobacco is Wacko (if you're a teen)." That's the kind of shit you'd hear from a person in a puppy costume. That's the kind of campaign that can get non-smokers beaten mercilessly in their schools. Did the mormons decide to take over on the anti-smoking ads for a week or something? I know they did a great job spreading that crazy religion around the country, but getting cigarettes out of kids mouths is a lot harder than getting people to go to church. Church is seductive; you get everlasting life and those lenghty painful medical procedures are reduced to getting slapped in the head by a man on a stage. Convincing a kid to not smoke is a harder kind of mind control. You remember the mind control used on us that made us all lay down and cover our heads every day at 4:00? Of course you don't. Because the Russians don't want you to.
People claimed Joe Camel marketed tobacco to kids. Bullshit. Think of all the forest fires that got started just to piss Smokey the Bear off. Kids hate you. They hate your irrational bitchy asses. Nicotine barely makes you high. You can smoke 50 cigarettes, and still get about as high as you would if you held your breath for half a minute. So they're not doing it to get high, and the fact that most of us are still sane after the Super Friends and the Banana Splits proves that kids don't base their lives on what cartoon animals say. Forget Joe Camel. They're doing it because they know that if their lobbying parents are trying to get rid of something, it must kick ass. Remember video games, sex, alcohol, not being somebody, drugs, and fire hazards? Of course you don't. Because the Russians don't want you to.
Idiocy doesn't stop here. Suing someone for spilling hot coffee on yourself makes you money. But it's sort of admitting to the world that you're such a retard you can't be responsible for your own actions. You know, in addition to being greedy, helplessly stupid, and dangerously clumsy. Of course, most people respond to lawsuits like that by saying, "They won't think you're such an idiot when you have A MILLION DOLLARS!" Yeah... no one hates rich people. But think about this: if you would really sell your pride and respect for money, why aren't you doing it right now? If you want money, take a shit in your hand and eat it. There are travelling freak shows that are always looking for people that can do stuff like that. Have you seen the Tom Green show? He may not be a genius, but he was smart enough to know that if he makes himself look like a big enough moron, people will pay him for it.
There are other reasons everyone's turning sarcastic. Have you ever had a friend who gives you obvious advice? You'll be over at their house putting their pets in the microwave, and he'll say "Hey, if you need to use my microwave, hit the amount of time you want to cook the thing, and then hit start." You'll probably say, "Duh" or "No shit, Captain Microwave Handbook," but you shouldn't be mad at your friend. Eighty percent of the people they or you run into need help with things like microwaves and what's okay to rub into your skin. We've been breeding stupid people for generations. They're notoriously fertile [the stupid]. The non-stupid have a tendency to have babies on purpose and at planned intervals, and it's raising the ratio of imbeciles to regulars to astonishing levels.Let's assume only half the people on the planet were stupid at one time. The nonstupid married, then had a kid or two, raised them like Dr. Spock told them to, and worked hard to put them through college. In contrast, the stupids had a kid or two, then got married, had a few more kids, found out about a couple more on a TV talk show, and worked hard to save money to hit the lottery to put their kids through a plate glass window after they got fired from the cannery.In a few generations, the nonstupid will have been bred to extinction. So don't blame your friend for giving you obvious advice. The guy he had over yesterday didn't know how the soap dispenser worked, had to chew it open with his teeth, and knocked himself out because you never told him there was no diving in the bathtub. Everyone wants to get treated like they're a genius, but the fact is, we can't afford the risk. You might look smart enough to hide the rat poison from your children, but there are others who are smart enough to know that if you don't get specific instructions for everything you do, it can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars when your kid makes a pesticide milkshake.
We don't listen to warning labels, and I can prove it. On every pack of cigarettes, it TELLS YOU IT'S GOING TO KILL YOU. This isn't a warning label on a plastic bag that was written by some asshole at the plastic bag factory. The warning on cigarettes comes from the Surgeon General. Cigarettes give you black lungs, shortness of breath, yellow teeth, your clothes smell like something you spilled on the stove, and then you die coughing forty years before your friends. You can ignore advice from non-surgeons. Well the Surgeon General is a doctor. In fact, they're the supreme commander of doctors. If doctors were to start a war against the bowlers or the bird watchers, the Surgeon General would have the biggest hat and stand at the back of the army shouting, "Hold the line, men! Take two of these FISTS and call me in the morning!" Read the pack of cigarettes. If the Surgeon General tells you something might kill you and give your future kids extra toes and eyes, listen to him. Do you need a warning from the Surgeon Jesus before you start taking advice?
And trust me, if the world isn't listening to life-or-death advice from the Surgeon General, they're going to ignore the shit out of the fine print on a plastic bag. In fact, if through some tragic accident you end up looking through a Skymall catalog, people are selling plastic bags that you wear over your head. For fire safety. Because the best way to deal with a fiery death is to distract yourself with a smaller, stupider crisis.
The non-smoking commercials are actually funded by the company that makes cigarettes. It's like they're taunting us. Are they flash-framing subliminal messages at us? How can half the country smoke when the only thing on my TV is lists of tobacco death statistics. We know more about what cigarette does to the human body than than anyone knows about anything else. They have to be mocking us. One of the commercials actually says "Tobacco is Wacko (if you're a teen)." That's the kind of shit you'd hear from a person in a puppy costume. That's the kind of campaign that can get non-smokers beaten mercilessly in their schools. Did the mormons decide to take over on the anti-smoking ads for a week or something? I know they did a great job spreading that crazy religion around the country, but getting cigarettes out of kids mouths is a lot harder than getting people to go to church. Church is seductive; you get everlasting life and those lenghty painful medical procedures are reduced to getting slapped in the head by a man on a stage. Convincing a kid to not smoke is a harder kind of mind control. You remember the mind control used on us that made us all lay down and cover our heads every day at 4:00? Of course you don't. Because the Russians don't want you to.
People claimed Joe Camel marketed tobacco to kids. Bullshit. Think of all the forest fires that got started just to piss Smokey the Bear off. Kids hate you. They hate your irrational bitchy asses. Nicotine barely makes you high. You can smoke 50 cigarettes, and still get about as high as you would if you held your breath for half a minute. So they're not doing it to get high, and the fact that most of us are still sane after the Super Friends and the Banana Splits proves that kids don't base their lives on what cartoon animals say. Forget Joe Camel. They're doing it because they know that if their lobbying parents are trying to get rid of something, it must kick ass. Remember video games, sex, alcohol, not being somebody, drugs, and fire hazards? Of course you don't. Because the Russians don't want you to.
Idiocy doesn't stop here. Suing someone for spilling hot coffee on yourself makes you money. But it's sort of admitting to the world that you're such a retard you can't be responsible for your own actions. You know, in addition to being greedy, helplessly stupid, and dangerously clumsy. Of course, most people respond to lawsuits like that by saying, "They won't think you're such an idiot when you have A MILLION DOLLARS!" Yeah... no one hates rich people. But think about this: if you would really sell your pride and respect for money, why aren't you doing it right now? If you want money, take a shit in your hand and eat it. There are travelling freak shows that are always looking for people that can do stuff like that. Have you seen the Tom Green show? He may not be a genius, but he was smart enough to know that if he makes himself look like a big enough moron, people will pay him for it.
There are other reasons everyone's turning sarcastic. Have you ever had a friend who gives you obvious advice? You'll be over at their house putting their pets in the microwave, and he'll say "Hey, if you need to use my microwave, hit the amount of time you want to cook the thing, and then hit start." You'll probably say, "Duh" or "No shit, Captain Microwave Handbook," but you shouldn't be mad at your friend. Eighty percent of the people they or you run into need help with things like microwaves and what's okay to rub into your skin. We've been breeding stupid people for generations. They're notoriously fertile [the stupid]. The non-stupid have a tendency to have babies on purpose and at planned intervals, and it's raising the ratio of imbeciles to regulars to astonishing levels.Let's assume only half the people on the planet were stupid at one time. The nonstupid married, then had a kid or two, raised them like Dr. Spock told them to, and worked hard to put them through college. In contrast, the stupids had a kid or two, then got married, had a few more kids, found out about a couple more on a TV talk show, and worked hard to save money to hit the lottery to put their kids through a plate glass window after they got fired from the cannery.In a few generations, the nonstupid will have been bred to extinction. So don't blame your friend for giving you obvious advice. The guy he had over yesterday didn't know how the soap dispenser worked, had to chew it open with his teeth, and knocked himself out because you never told him there was no diving in the bathtub. Everyone wants to get treated like they're a genius, but the fact is, we can't afford the risk. You might look smart enough to hide the rat poison from your children, but there are others who are smart enough to know that if you don't get specific instructions for everything you do, it can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars when your kid makes a pesticide milkshake.
Passing Torches
For the 2, maybe 3 people who actually read my blog, I know I've kind of let it fall by the wayside. I promised you the musings of a single dad, and I have failed to deliver. But someone a lot prettier than me (oh, it's possible, believe it or not) convinced me to start writing again, and she was right. So here I am. What's on my mind, you ask? My son. Yesterday he was feeling a little sick, but he livened up a bit and started playing and handing me his toys, silently asking me to help him put Mr. Potato Head together. He's 17 months and can say very basic things like "thank you" and "da-da" and "loveoo". The rest of it is babyspeak, but I understand completely. As I sat and stopped him over and over from pulling all of daddy's DVDs down, I looked at him and realized that he is all that's best in me, and that I would literally spend all the days of my life, from this moment to the next, helping him to grow into a good man. It's a very basic instinct, one that is inherently coded into the DNA sequence of all parents: the desire for our children to surpass us. Did you know that the median age for pregnancy in America is roughly 24? That means that in our lifetime, we only have an average of 24 to truly live for ourselves. The rest of it is spent preparing our children to live THEIR 24 years in preparation for preparing THEIR children, and so on. I've heard some parents complain that they never have time for themselves because of their children, and I think that's an incorrect statement. We are all part of our own legacy, another link in the chain. Our children are extensions of ourselves, just as we are of our own parents. So to live your life for your child is, in fact, not only to live for yourself, but your parents and your children's children and so on and so forth. There will always be a part of my mother and my father in my heart, even when they're gone. And there will always be a little piece of my soul within my son, and he will pass on the things he's learned from me to his children, and with that, he will pass me on as well. And that, to me, more so than any promotion or any job or skill or reward…..that is really living.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The beginning
Well, here's my first blog post. If you've come here for valuable life lessons, you won't find them. What you WILL find are the random musings of a single dad, covering everything from playing with my son to my stance on current issues to dealing with being divorced under the age of 30. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then no worries. If that piques your interest for some reason, hey, stick around. If nothing else, I'm known for being blatantly frank about wha I think, so it should make for some interesting reading.
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