The Pants Are Not Optional
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.”
Yeah as complaints about a duty station go, it’s pretty mild. But nonetheless, it was annoying. And so I got in the habit of taking showers at night, so that I could have some warm water.
So one evening it is about 9 o’clock or so, and I have just finished washing up. I grab my BDU pants and a t-shirt off of the mangled, partially-shredded wooden bench that was in the middle of the shower room, and I got dressed. I then start heading towards the TV room, figuring I’ll see what’s on the AFN for an hour or so before heading to my rack.
On the way there, I felt a mild stabbing pain in my left leg, about mid thigh. It felt like I had been jabbed with something. Thinking back to the beat up wooden bench I had stored my clothes on, I figured I had picked up a splinter. I decided that once I got to the TV room, I would have to find and extract it.
I got about ten feet down the hall when I felt another jab, slightly higher than the last.
I adjusted my BDU pants to try to keep the splinter from poking me, and I continued on my way, since I was near my destination. Only about four feet away from the closed door. This is important later.
About this time I realized that my leg was beginning to hurt pretty bad, right around where the first jab happened. And then I felt something crawling up my thigh, followed by another jab higher than the first two.
I was beginning to have my doubts about the splinter theory.
And so I determined that there was some sort of stinging creature inside of my pants.
Furthermore, there was some sort of stinging creature, in my pants, climbing it’s way up, towards my crotch. I felt that this was a cause for some alarm.
All things considered I believe I handled the situation calmly, and with as much grace and aplomb as could reasonably be mustered. Which is to say: I screamed like a wounded girl scout and pulled down my pants.
I don’t know how many of you have tried to pull down your pants while walking, while simultaneously fighting off some form of giant carnivorous wasp-parasite monster, but it’s a tad more awkward than it sounds. The critter started to fly away as soon as my pants began to drop. I tried to swat it before it got escaped, but mainly succeeded in punching myself in the junk. And then I stumbled. Right into the door to the TV room. Which not being locked, proceeded to swing open. Depositing me neatly inside the room, directly in front of my rather confused Team Leader.
“Specialist?”
“Yes Sergeant?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes Sergeant.”
“You sure?”
“Yes Sergeant.”
“Just checking. Why were you taking off you pants?”
“Well I-“
“You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. But if this urge overtakes you again, please try to remember that no, the pants are not optional.”
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February 11th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Hee! Glad to see another story from you Skippy
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February 11th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
lol ouch, the worst i had was putting on some tracksuit pants one mornign and feeling something sharp poking me in the leg and discovering there was a rather large grasshopper :P
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February 12th, 2009 at 12:04 am
I had a white faced wasp get into my pants before. That sucked.
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February 12th, 2009 at 3:01 am
So what was stinging you though? Wasp, hornet, mini flying velociraptor? You are lucky it wasn’t a spider..a black widow heading north and stinging along the would have been hell for you.
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February 12th, 2009 at 5:23 am
I have a buddy who likes Ferrets. They’re basically like small weasles. He had two. Apparently pantlegs are like crack for ferrets. The first time I met the rodents they each went up a different leg, got territorial, and got into a fight. All in my pants. I hate ferrets.
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Stickfodder reply on February 12th, 2009 6:41 am:
Doesn’t Skippy have Ferrets?
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Janice reply on February 12th, 2009 11:42 am:
Yup, we have ferrets. The only time I’ve heard him scream “GET HER OUT OF MY PANTS!” involved a ferret and pants still attached to him.
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Stickfodder reply on February 21st, 2009 1:48 pm:
Damn the motivational thing fits here better ;___;
Anonymous and STILL Employed reply on February 13th, 2009 11:19 am:
Ferrets are cool, but I gotta say, for the love of the gods don’t pass out on the floor shirtless when your buddy said he’s going to let them out. Especially if you know he’ll do it anyway.
Nipples are like eyebrows, you never fully appreciate them until they’re threatened.
Captcha: illusionist clues – kinda defies the point
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Pom Rania reply on April 9th, 2009 12:32 pm:
I was nipped by a ferret in the eyebrow once.
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February 12th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Hmmm lucky you weren’t allergic to it.. my military related bee sting happened during FTX in basic. I was on the rifle range with my M-16 and in the prone position when something landed on my neck. It was like 9 million degrees out (South Texas gets HOT) so I assumed it was sweat. I fired one more shot and the hornet that had decided to rest there stung me twice. For some reason my trigger finger reacted to this by emptying my clip while my throat swelled shut. I stood up, and my TI started yelling something at me but I don’t really remember what he said, as I chose this moment to mumble “I don’t feel good” and pass out.
I woke up later that day with my TI sitting in a chair across the room. Now, I may have been hallucinating from the meds, but I would swear he turned into a big red bull and charged at me screaming “Damnit trainee, the next time you are going to have an allergic reaction to something like that don’t mumble ‘I don’t feel good’ and pass out! And I don’t care what stung you, don’t stand up on the rifle range”
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February 12th, 2009 at 5:51 am
Personally, I got nuttin’. But it did remind me of coming home from Bosnia and the time spent at Taszar, Hungary. We had this SSG who was a complete dick. His idea of a joke was to nail your shower shoes to the wooden floor – our mini-PX didn’t carry them either or, while you were out in the freezing rain/snow for 18-24 hours while he “slaved away” in the heated office would pour slush and gravel into your fart sack. Funny-ha-ha.
In Taszar a SPC followed the SSG into the shower tent and pretended to get ready to take a shower until the SSG was in a stall showering. At that point the SPC grabbed the SSG’s clothes and towel and took them back to our tent.
For some reason the SSG couldn’t find the humor in having to walk a few hundred yards clothed with a couple paper towels in March. His “jokes” stopped immediately too. I’m still in awe of that SPC.
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Dave in NC reply on February 12th, 2009 9:26 am:
One of my ROTC classmates had this nasty habit of jumping out from behind corners, yelling, and laughing at people’s reactions.
Apparently the SF SGM’s reaction to his “joke” was a sight to be seen. I didn’t see it, but I heard “may not walk again” stated many times.
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February 12th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I have to say, that that reminded me of a very comical time in which in a building I cannot specify, one of the AF students learning intel with me was walking around and chose to look into the paper schoolbus glued to the tile in the celing. It was about this time that a cockroach burst out, scaring the living crap out of this student for 2 reasons, one, anything bursting out of a paper schoolbus at your face is likely to startle you, and 2, he was very afraid of cockroaches.
Captcha- BITTERSWEET blast, a new kind of cereal that tasts like crap
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February 12th, 2009 at 10:47 am
A friend of mine’s girlfriend was lying back in bed, idly sqeezing a pimple on his leg. Instead of a satisfing, if mildly painful *splurt*, when the fluid is expelled, a tiny worm was partly exposed and promptly crawled back in.
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David reply on February 12th, 2009 12:53 pm:
You win. Please, no more.
Captcha: $2.50 Marksman – don’t make me try to hire this guy.
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Minty reply on February 12th, 2009 2:28 pm:
Dude, I was eating. Fuck you.
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Stickfodder reply on February 12th, 2009 5:22 pm:
Yeah eating while reading this site isn’t really the best idea.
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Speed reply on February 12th, 2009 6:56 pm:
HA-HA-HAAAAA!!! Now I have to clean up ice cream off of the keyboard, you know, the stuff that just squirted from my nose?! Too damn funny! In a twisted CI sort of way…
Squid Vicious reply on February 12th, 2009 3:32 pm:
Oh dear god, that’s so frickin’ nasty.
*suddenly doesn’t want lunch any more*
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February 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
well i wanna know did she eat it or what cant let good parasites go to waste
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February 12th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
After 29 years in the Army, stinging bugs and parasites are sort of “ho hum”. But squrriels bring back the Rambo flashbacks. While stepping out of a building wearing BDUs in a moderate rain, a squrriel must have slipped off an overhead wire and felp spread eagle at my feet. He sounded like a wet deflated football hitting concrete after falling 30 feet. I froze, not knowing wait the vicious beast would do. /it jumped to its fee and then leaped for the nearest tree looking thing, hitting me at knee level and up. By up I mean he went up to my waist where my untuked BDU shirt. Still in lightening speed mode he went up inside my shirt with squrrielly nails bitting into my soft belly and chest. Suddenly his head came out of the open collar and we were nost to nose. For split second, neither moved or said a thing, then all at once the vermin let out a shrill scream of horror followed by my own wussy scream of horror as the beast tried to find a way out. I had claw marks all over my back, chest and neck before it found an escape route. Some of the cuts and sratches bled fairly well. I lost a really good girlfriend over that because she refused to believe the squrriel story, opting for the one in her mind about the new freaky kinky girl on campus. Obviously with nothing to lose, I soon went out with Miss Freaky and she was nothing campared to the squrriel’s ability to do damage with nails. But her trying was much more fun.
Just one more squrriel story from Maj Mac. I was attending a law enforcement basic training course. The school had state inmates doing the worker bee stuff about campus and one had a pet squrriel. The squrriel was awsome. He’d play with other wild squrriels in the trees all day long in the trees and would be whistled back to the shop where the inmate and squrriel lived. That squrriel would reduce the wild squrriels’ fear of us, like when we sat down under the shade trees to relax after some heavy training or sitting in a cicle sharring weaons cleaning supplies. Those bastards seemed to know what parts were needed because it would turn into a game of squrriel grab ass tryin to get parts back from them. But it was well tolerated by all to help break the monotiny and supply a little humor.
One evening, I walked inot the shop and by my allowing the screen door to slam ahut, I royally pissed this squrriel off. He lept from over my head, hit my shoulders and began ripping neck, shoulders and arms to shreds. When it appeared we were about to subdue my attacker, he sank his teeth into my arm and refused to let loose. Several others were biten trying to break his hold on me. I mean verocious nashing squrriel teeth had found several minor arteries and blood was everywhere.
After the animal was restrained and in proper custody, I went toward the main building to find the staff duty instructor for first aid. I left a trail of blood behind and many followed it out of curiosity. I was quickly rushed to the hospital in a police car followed by a dozen or so more.
In class the next day, with badages all about my arms, neck, shoulders and head, some still seeping blood, I recieved my class nickname “Squrriel”. This quickly set a pattern of nicknames for me over the next few years. Never did I ever get a cool masculine nickname for being proficient in police and military training events. Top Gun/Fastest Gun? “Squrriel Shot”, or I cheated in becoming pretty decent in hand to hand combat becase I used my “squrriel tail” And who had to climb the tree to be a sniper “Squrriel Shot” I did get lots of presents like peanuts and pecans.
I’m over it today, but I do like to have flashbacks to iritate my wife when a squrriel runs in front of our car in the street or climbs the window screens during our dinner. That happened 18 years ago and I still run into people who call me “Squrriel”.
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Minty reply on February 13th, 2009 12:07 pm:
I sympathize with the squirrel terror. The first college I attended had a rather lax drug policy. My friends and I always swore that the squirrels got into someone’s acid stash, because not only did they not run away from us, they’d creep toward us with this really crazy look in their beady little eyes. As a result, a lot of 5 ft.+, over 100 lbs. humans shamed their species by running away, completely terrorized. Damn, was I glad to transfer out of that place. . .
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Maj Mac reply on February 13th, 2009 10:42 pm:
Oops. Sorry everybody. I just read my reply and I must apologize for the typos and poor spelling. It was a cold night and I had warmed up with several shots of Jack Daniel’s.
By the way Minty, are their any colleges without a lax drug policy?
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Minty reply on February 15th, 2009 8:37 pm:
Well, the college I ended up graduating from had a policy of “if ANYONE sees, smells, has a paranoid delusion, etc. that you are using drugs and reports it, you’re in trouble.” The college I attended my first year’s policy was. . . hrm. . . well, let’s just say one night, I was hanging out in my dorm common room. I was drunk (underage), one person was babbling about how hard they were tripping on acid, and two more were smoking pot. Two security guards wandered, watched us for about five minutes, bitched about what a boring night it was for another five, then left.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Damn. Well, that certainly tops the time when I was in Boy Scouts and got a mosquito bite on my ballsack.
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February 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Hmmm, I feel another contest coming on that could top the pants one. How about a list of things that you are not allowed to do with animals, insects and that sort of thing. Skippy do you have anything for a prize?
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February 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I’ve got one for that, “No longer allowed to explain the concept of a kitten grenade, aspecially if they out rank me”.
(It dosn’t help if you have easy access to grenades and a reputation for doing random crap for shits n giggles)
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February 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Engrishfunny has a nice tie-in to skippyslist with this pic:
http://engrishfunny.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/engrish-funny-pants.jpg
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