Archive for the ‘Skippy’s Silly Stories’ Category

In the late 90′s I got to take part in what at the time was the latest military escapade in Eastern Europe, the KFOR peacekeeping mission to Kosovo. My elements from my detachment went in the first wave, and I personally crossed the border within the first few days.

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80. Not allowed to wear a dress to any army functions.
81. May not bring a drag queen to the battalion formal dance.

Both of these events are part of the same story.
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At the present my wife is large enough that walking around a store is very uncomfortable for her. And so when we go shopping, we usually get a wheelchair for her. It saves her the hassle of walking, and I can roll her around a lot faster than she can waddle on her own anyways.

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Lately I have been spending most of my nights on the couch. Not because I have done something to anger my wife or anything. But because of one of the less pleasant changes that her body has gone through due to our impending parenthood.

She has started to snore.

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To say that I have a talent for languages would be like saying that the Hindenburg was fireproof.

Yes this get’s to Pop Rocks and Coke. It just takes a little bit, please bear with me.

Being raised Jewish, I attended Hebrew School from Kindergarten to the Seventh grade. That whole time I was given classes in how to speak Hebrew. I managed to get to the point where I could memorize the sounds enough to get through my Bar-Mitzvah. In Middle School, and again in High School I attended French language classes. I managed to learn to conjugate verbs, but that was about it. When I briefly attended college before joining the military, I took French classes. I managed to pass the first level, but couldn’t advance any farther than that, despite multiple attempts.

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Several years ago I was a student at SMU, in the Dallas area. In fact, if you go to the home page of my site, you can see an ad for my old school.

So while I was there, I would occasionally read the student paper. And one day, upon reading the school paper, I found the following opinion piece.

A Warning Has Been Issued.

For those that don’t want to read it, in a nutshell it states: “The bible should be interpreted literally, and anyone who attempts to interpret it is going to hell for disagreeing with me.”

Also as per school policy, the article had a picture of her with it. She was not wearing a hat. This is significant later.

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The Winner is Lord Enigma who suggested list item 198. Not allowed to lead a “Coup” during training missions.

At first I wasn’t sure if I should tell this story here.  I’ve always had a policy of not telling telling any stories that could easily be traced back to people who might reasonably still be in service.  And I definitely don’t want to tell any stories that might implicate someone in some sort of extra-legal shenanigans. (Which is, coincidentally, why many of the submitted stories don’t go up on the site.  I don’t care how funny you think the felony assault turned out. I don’t want to get involved.)

But I did promise that I would tell the whichever story got the most votes.  And this one was the clear winner.

So here it goes.  In Script Format.

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Many years ago, I got to spend about six months living in tents in the Kosovo region.  Now, there are many many reasons why living in a large communal tent for six months isn’t much fun.  And one of the more annoying reasons is vermin.

See, our camp was located in what used to be a great big field.  And in the great big field there lived a great many mice.  Resourceful mice, with a taste for MRE’s, and a rather impressive set of rappelling gear, based on the places that they were able to get into.

At one point we had some candy stuck an large decorative tin can, on top of a television, on top of a plastic storage bin.  So this is a good four feet off of the ground, with every surface made of smooth plastic or metal.  And mice still got in.  I figure they were lowering themselves down from the roof, with some elaborate pulley system, like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

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More years ago than I like to admit I was stationed in Sarajevo, Bosnia. While I was there we lived in what had originally been some sort of office building, but had now been converted into a barracks.
Overall as housing during a deployment goes we had it pretty good. There was a cafeteria built into the building, which meant that we got hot food served to us three times a day. We had heat and AC. There was a television room with a VCR, pool tables, and it even had a bar.  It sure beat the hell out of living in a tent.

Of course, this place did have the occasional water problems, which have been discussed earlier.  One of the other problems was that there was generally enough hot water for maybe three people to take a shower in the morning.  Which meant that you got to take a lot of cold showers.

Now at this time people who haven’t been in the military are probably going “No hot water?  That sucks!”.  People who have been in the military, especially those who have been deployed to the Middle East over the past several years are probably going: “You had a bar and you are complaining about the water?  You can just fuck right off Skippy.”

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So the other night I was in Wal-Mart to pick up some supplies.  I’m not bragging, just setting the scene.

While heading towards the back of the store I find myself getting close to the women’s shoe department and what appeared to be an epic argument between a customer and an employee.

You know how sometimes you can tell a lot about a conversation from just the visual cues, without ever hearing a word that’s being spoken?

The customer was an enormous angry sweaty woman, wearing a tank top and the worlds most ironic pair of biker shorts ever.  She was shaking a shoebox, and pointing furiously.  With every gesture she set of waves of secondary tectonic shifting.  It was like watching angry jello.

The employee was this tiny little woman, whose expression and body language just read defeat.  She would periodically offer up a short phrase, which would only inspire the customer to greater peaks of wobbly rage.

I could tell that the problem was probably beyond the employee’s ability to fix and was probably not her fault in the first place.  Anyone who has any sort of customer service job has seen this fight dozens of times.

As I got closer I was able to hear the details.  The angry lady evidently wears a size 8 shoe.  And the shoes she was holding were apparently labeled size 8.  But they hadn’t fit.  Clearly Wal-Mart had labeled the shoes wrong in a deliberate attempt to humiliate her and now everything was ruined forever.  And naturally this was the employee’s fault.

Just as I started to pass them the poor employee suggested, “Maybe if you tried an eight wide it would fit better?”

“And eight wide?  Do I look like I wear an eight wide?!”

You know how sometimes you have those moments where your mouth just turns itself on with no input from your brain?  Well I had one of those moments.

“Lady, everything everything you wear looks wide!”

Every person for about three aisles stopped talking.  The cranky one dropped her shoebox, and everybody looked at me.

“I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”

The employee slowly nodded.

And with that I left, before I could be knocked down, trampled, and ultimately devoured,