Regular readers will probably remember that I recently asked for readers to submit any any funny military stories they had.  Well my new friend Sam has submitted one that I think is pretty good, and so I have allowed him to post it up here.

When I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston for nursing school there was a brand new facility opening as part of the hospital. For those non-military, the hospital in Fort Sam is the top dog of all Army medical centers. The new building was called the “Center for the Intrepid” and is a rehab facility for all the amputees coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The grand opening was a big to-do, canine-equestrian extravaganza with guest speakers/performers like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, John Mellencamp, and Rosie O’Donnell. I get the first three: major political figures and a celebrity who made very large contributions to build the facility. I never did understand why Rosie was there. But, then again, there’s a lot of people that don’t understand why she is here.

Needless to say, all the equipment in this building is state of the art and beyond anything I had ever heard of, let alone seen. My squad was lucky enough to be part of a tour through the facility about 2 weeks before they started receiving patients. The tour guide was a Captain and was showing us the various high-tech gadgets for treating the amputees and helping them cope with their new prosthetics.

One of the facilities in the building was installed on a concept so simple that I never would have thought of it. It was a fully furnished apartment.
The object was to allow the amputees to get used to doing routines chores like laundry, making dinner, vacuuming, etc. with their new prosthetics. And this apartment was NICE; a very plush pad indeed.

At this point the tour guide mentions that the whole building and equipment cost around $55 million and then asked if there were any questions before we moved on. Being the resident joker/smartass of my squad I raised my hand and asked, “So, what’s the rent go for on a place like this?” OK, kinda funny; a few people laughed until I decided to follow up. You know that voice in your head that’s supposed to inform your mouth when you’re about to say something really stupid? Well, that voice apparently was on vacation that day. Now, in my head, it was just the first metaphor for the money spent on the facility.
The follow-up statement was, “This place must cost an arm and a leg!”

Unfortunately, as you can imagine, it was NOT received well. The guy was a full-bird colonel next to me who, if looks could kill, would have cut me in half on the spot. All I could think about was how that’s not what I meant and I feel so small right now they won’t have to open the door as I could walk underneath it. Of course, my whole squad, who knows my sense of humor, thought I did it on purpose so I had to explain again after we got outside that I really didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did. I never did live that one down.

Over the last few years at the haunted house I work at, I have been “promoted” from actor to security. The only real disadvantage to being security is that you don’t get as many scares in as you do when you are an actor in a scene.

The advantages are that I get much less sweaty, tired and beat up. You don’t have makeup and blood to wash off at the end of the night. And occasionally you get to hear interesting customer complaints, which for the most part, you have to address professionally, no matter how hard it is to do so.

A couple years back, I am standing outside of the back door, wearing my security uniform and gear. My uniform consists of a black shirt with our logo on it and the word “STAFF” on the sleeve. My gear consists of a three cell Mag-Lite hanging in a pair of tiger-striped fuzzy handcuffs, that I bought at the local sex shop, which are looped through my belt. These are how you know I am official or something resembling it.

As this one group exits the building, one of the guys in the group is obviously pissed off. As soon as he spots me, he makes a beeline for me, and asks the obligatory question of the pissed off customer, “Do you work here?”

Realizing this may not be the best time to be a smart ass by pointing to the logo and the word “STAFF” that are clearly printed on my shirt, I ask him what I can help him with.

“I want to make a complaint.”

I already have a good idea of who the offending actor is, and I am pretty sure that this guys story is far from resembling the truth of the matter. Even so I did not expect the next words out of his mouth.

“One of your employees spit in my ear.”

“Somebody did what?”

“One of the guys in there, spit right in my ear, and got it right in the hole.”

Now I knew who did it, Todd. Todd was our house roamer that night. Todd is not the type to spit on anyone for any reason, but I know it was him because of where the guy described the incident occurred and just that fact that it was such a weird complaint, it could not be about anyone else but Todd.

Todd was the guy that when our Jack the Ripper got sick and needed to leave his scene to go puke, he jumped into the scene to take over while we found a replacement. Thing was, he was in a clown costume, but he still found a way to make it his scene. He stood over the fake dead hooker on the floor, with his pants around his ankles, and when people came by, he would yell, “This isn’t what it looks like. Someone killed my hooker. Call 911.”

Todd is a true haunted house professional, and a top notch veteran haunt actor. Seriously, you don’t get, “Someone killed my hooker” out of a rookie.

This particular night, Todd was dressed in his nun costume, vampire teeth, a full beard and a pair of nunchuks. (Get it… NUN-chuks). The name of his character is Sister Badtouch. Here is a photo of he and I having a fight, for the fun of it, in costume. I’m the one on the left.

Anyway, as the customer was telling the tale of this completely unprovoked, precision spitting into his ear canal, all I could think was, “How did Todd end up spitting in someones ear? This can’t be what happened. I have to get the real story.”

So after apologizing to this guy and getting him calmed down by assuring him that the offending actor would not be working here after Halloween, they eventually left. (I neglected to tell him that none of us would be working here after Halloween, but that bit of information might not have helped calm him down as much.)

Dying of curiosity, I immediately ran into the house to look for Todd.

I found him in some dark hallway traumatizing a group of teen aged girls.

I told him, “Some guy just complained to me that someone spit in their ear. What the hell happened?”

After he stopped laughing, Todd explained that throughout the night he had been using little chunks of Alka-Seltzer to make it look like he was foaming at the mouth. I already knew this as I saw him doing it and it looked great. (Seriously, you have to love the image of a rabid vampire nun coming at you with nunchuks). I also knew he had been foaming all night as there were little wet spots on the floor throughout the house, that I kept slipping on.

He went on to say, “I came out to scare that group and the guys were doing the usual, ‘I’m not scared of you, you suck thing.’ So I did what I usually do in that circumstance, I gave ‘em a rasberry.” (For those unfamiliar with the term raspberry, it is also known as a “Bronx cheer” and according to George Carlin the real term is a bilabial fricative, but according to Wikipedia it is an unvoiced linguolabial trill).

So I asked him, how does that count as spitting in someones ear?

Todd explained that since he had been foaming at the mouth, he had a bunch of the foam still stuck to his beard and moustache, and when he gave the rasberry, it shot some of the foam straight into the guy’s ear. It was a lucky shot, really. A one in a million chance.

We laughed about it and finished out the night and later recounted the tale with the owner and the rest of the crew over some beers. We agreed that the Alka-Seltzer was a good effect but should not be repeated, and not because it might get on customers, we don’t care about that. We used to “joke” that if you made someone pee themselves in a corner, and it was all over the floor, scare the next group into the corner to mop it up. The reason the Alka-Seltzer was retired was because it made the floor slippery and in a haunted house, safety is the priority.

This has been just one sample of the kinds of customer service issues that one encounters when working in a haunted house. Someday I’ll tell you how we accidentally broke a quadriplegics high tech wheel chair, but, fortunately, managed to not shut off her life support.

Ah, good times.

They’re not squirrels but they will have to do.

Release the kitties!

One of the less fun aspects of being in the military is the way you will be utilized on a day-to-day basis, while in garrison. For instance, you may have just finished training on a new high-tech computer system. Or learned how to speak an exotic and obscure language. You might even be qualified on some sort of armored killing machine capable of destroying and terrifying the enemies of our nation.

But at the end of the day, a normal day, you are a grounds-keeping specialist.

I, myself spent six months doing my initial entry training, Basic, Illustrator training at Fort Mead, followed by jump school. I was a lean, mean, Photoshopping machine, who was also able to jump out of airplanes for no suitably explored reason. And I had been assigned to PSYOP at Fort Bragg where I would use my newly acquired skills to help craft propaganda to confuse and demoralize our enemies. And on my first day at my brand new unit, they told me I was being assigned to “Post Beautification Detail”. This turned out to be Army-speak for “Here’s a weed-whacker. Have a nice month doing lawn care.”

And so I spent the next 30 days taking my frustrations out on the various North Carolina weeds. During this time, one particular incident does stick out for me. At one point, me and my elite post beautification team were handling the grass near the Special Operations Command building and we came across some device on the ground. It looked like a little tiny radar installation and was presumably some sort of high-speed communication device. It looked like someone had being using it and just wandered away. I noticed that it had some sort of yellow and black warning sticker on it, maybe the size of a pack of cigarettes. I wondered what it said, and got close enough to read it.

“Danger. Non-aligning isotopes. Do not approach closer than 10 feet while in operation.”

“Hmmmm,” I though to myself, standing maybe two feet away from this device, “I think I will run away screaming like a little girl now.”

To this day I still have no idea what that device was.

A fun tradition at Ft Bragg was that once a year they would have Post Clean-Up event. This meant that for a week, everybody got to help with the lawn care. And by everybody I, of course, mean the enlisted along with a few unlucky officers who had evidently pissed off someone important.

One particular year my unit got assigned to clean up the Mata-Mile.

For those of you that are not familiar with Ft Bragg, the Mata-Mile is one of those general purpose areas which gets used by different groups for different activities. For most soldiers on the post, it was a path through the woods, suitable for running or ruck-marches.

For every person living in the nearby town it was a path through the woods suitable for dumping things like old washing-machines, tires, dead hookers, and boxes of unlabeled urinalysis samples.

And for high ranking officers, it was a path through the woods, which needed to be cleaned on a yearly basis. To hear it told to us, the cleanliness of this path had a direct and urgent effect on our nation’s ability to defend itself, even if no one could ever explain why.

So one week we are out there, raking the dirt path. Not raking things out of the dirt path. Just dragging a rake through the dirt. Not my idea, just following orders. So my unit is out there, industriously raking the dirt when a Captain came out with a new assignment. He wants us to go into the woods around the trail, and collect all of the pine needles and pine cones. And then to make them into piles under the trees. To make the area look more natural.

I will repeat this, and highlight a few points that might not be obvious.

This Captain, who is a grown man, who has graduated from college, and presumably came from some sort of officer training program. A man who has been in the military for at least five years or so. And he orders us to go make piles of pine cones and pine needles under all of the trees. To make the woods more “natural looking”.

After issuing this order he wandered away. Presumably to dispense his wisdom to other needy soldiers. One of my NCOs scratched his head and went, “Natural? Do piles of pine-cones ever happen naturally?”

And I decided to be helpful.

“I thinks so Sgt. Squirrels do that sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It’s how they bury their dead. You know, when they’re not burning them in little tiny long-ships.”

So, I have one of the coolest web hosts on the planet. Long-time readers may remember what happened last year when my site got nailed by Digg. She does a really great job making sure everyone can read my opinions on video games, military leadership, and vampire survival. Which is great because I feel that the whole world is entitled to my opinions, and you will all thank me when the vampires come for you. (Oh yes, you will.)

Well not only does Jen do a superb job in letting all of you read the babble that spills out of my brain, she also finds to time to work with charities. Not only is she working with a charity, but she picked the first recipient for her help in honor of me. This is great for two reasons. One, she’s helping to feed my ego. Which is pretty close to the most wonderful thing a person can do. (Sing my praises! SING, DAMN YOU!) Also, by honoring me in this way she pretty much obligates me to write about it, which should hopefully drive some attention to her cause. Which just goes to show that she is exactly the kind of smart and canny individual that you want helping your charity. Or being your web host for that matter.

Here’s another fun fact about Jen. Last August she and her son Jacob got to meet Stephen Colbert. And there is an interesting story there.

Jacob has a fairly serious problem with his heart. He has needed multiple surgeries and tons of other kinds of medical treatment. One of the few silver linings of cases like this is that he got to make use of the Make-A-Wish foundation. And through the two of them I got to learn a few things about how it works.

First of all, I learned that George Lucas will not meet with Make-A-Wish kids. He will let them go to Skywalker Ranch. But he won’t meet them. This puzzled me until I thought about it. If I had mangled a beloved science fiction franchise as badly as he had, I might be leery about letting a nerd with a life threatening illness near me. Some kid is going to show up with a dynamite vest screaming, "This is for Jar-Jar you bastard!"

So Jacob decided to meet with a classy celebrity. And thus he got to go visit the Colbert Report. He got to hang out backstage, meet Stephen. His mother even mentioned to my wife and me that they hung out with a journalist who was a guest on the show that day. I didn’t think much of that until I watched that episode later. It turns out the journalist was Tom Ricks. (And this was not long after that incident.)

And I mourned a lost opportunity. I could have gotten Jacob to give him grief. Jacob would make the perfect agent to antagonize Tom. No matter what he said, Mr. Ricks would have to take it. I mean, who’s going to be mean to a Make-A-Wish kid? It would have been awesome.

Of course, it has been pointed out that it would be really messed up to try to subvert some kids special Wish-Day into an attempt for petty revenge for a minor disagreement. "Now jacob, I know that this is your special day and all, but I need you to be mean to the reporter, can you do that for me buddy?" Yeah I’m a horrible person. But I’m funny, so it’s all okay.

Pirate Hip-Hop

That is all.

Whelp, it looks like I’m going to unveil the first guest writer soon. And before anyone says anything, Michiel doesn’t count as a guest. He’s pretty much moved in and has his feet up on the coffee table.

But due to some of the submissions I have received, I feel that I may need to lay out some ground rules.

Things that are good to email me:

1. Funny military stories
2. Funny stories in general
3. Links to amusing things
4. Treasure maps. (Hey you never know)
5. Additions for the “Friends of Skippy” list
6. Suggestions for things you would like for me to write about
7. A picture of you wearing a Squid Pie t-shirt
8. Questions that you would like me to answer
9. New Skippy’s List Variants you have found
10. Suggestive pictures (if you are a woman)

Things that are bad to email to me:

1. Fanfic
2. Even if it’s Skippy’s List themed
3. Even if “I swear you’ll like this one”
4. Suggestive pictures (if you are not a woman)
5. Anything that violates OPSEC.
6. Please do not confess to any criminal acts. There is a difference between light-hearted mischief and felony assault
7. Especially don’t do 5 or 6 from government email accounts
8. Please do not make me an “accessory after the fact”
9. Do not make a transcript of anything you and your friends did while drinking “epic quantities of peppermint schnapps”
10. To the cosplay folks with the camcorder: Bonus points for creativity, now please never do that again

Not funny legal junk:

Material submitted to appear on Skippy’s List is still your property, thus you retain the copyright. Nobody reads the legal stuff, so I bet you’re not even reading this. I will only use your submitted material on this web site unless I receive written permission from you to use it elsewhere. I like turtles. I will not claim your material as my own. Please don’t send other people’s work. Seriously, no fanfic. If you wish, I will put yoursubmission on my site with your email and a link to your website. Unless I don’t feel like it for some reason. Your material may be edited for grammatical and spelling corrections. Void where prohibited by law. I’m not paying for submissions at this time, and am not likely to start in the future. This is just a way to share some funny stories with the world on the Intertubes. La zona blanca está para el cargamento y descargar solamente.