Why Flyboys and Jarheads shouldn’t get along
OK, for all you jar-heads out there I only have 5 words for you…
“I Can’t Feel My Face!”
If you are a Marine and smacked your computer screen, it’s OK. If you are not a marine, never was a marine, and never will be a marine… What the hell were you thinking?!?
Recently I was fortunate enough to be sent to Florida for some advanced career training for the military. This is a joint training course involving all four major branches of the military as well as several foreign militaries. I was fortunate enough to end up with the marines. Now anyone who has gone TDY with marines know, if you are going to drink, take a marine. First of all, they are among the best brawlers in the US and will cover your butt should a brawl break out. Second of all, they know the best bar games. I was introduced to one called, “I can’t feel my face.”
The rules are simple: 1) Drink until you cannot feel your face. 2) Turn to the nearest marine and tell him/her “I can’t feel my face.” 3) The marine then gets to open palm slap you as hard as they possibly can.
If you feel the slap, you lose and must try harder (alcohol) to win. If you don’t feel the slap then you win.
So there I was… In Florida… During spring break… At one of the most popular club/bars in Fort Walton Beach… With a bunch of marines, who were all guys. I was drinking something that, literally, had a 3 drink per person limit, and I was on my fifth. For reference, it was rum. Refer to my previous posts if you want to see the kind of trouble rum and I get into. Needless to say I was feeling slightly hammered when one of the young marines turns to me and screams in my face “I can’t feel my face!” My first thought was… “OK.” Then one of the more experienced marines present introduced me to the game. After finishing my drink and ordering another I turned to the young marine and screamed in his face “I can’t feel my face!”
As a side note here I would like to introduce you to a drink called the Bikini-go-bye-bye. At most establishments there is a 3 drink limit on the consumption of said drink as most lightweight drinkers would suffer severe alcohol poisoning if they drank much more than that. It involves 5 different rums, all of which are highly flammable, and a small amount of passion fruit juice. It’s name is derived from the fact that with most females drinking it, after finishing the first one their bikini tops have a tendency to go bye-bye.
So I woke up a couple minutes later and definitely felt a sting on my left cheek. However after my sixth drink I wasn’t feeling much of anything but drunk and tried again. “I can’t feel my face!” *Smack!* Fortunately I remained conscious and pain free otherwise it may have been a long night. Unfortunately the marine smacked me so hard his hand carried through and hit the elderly lady sitting to my right. After some profuse apologies and a judiciously applied bikini-go-bye-bye she confessed she was a W.A.S.P and understood the games of soldiers completely. The rest of the night is a vague blur and a $297 bar tab.
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May 4th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
The only chance I ever got to go drinking with marines they got told “Don’t drink with her, she’s Scottish.”
..Boyfriends can be such partypoopers.
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May 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I had a drink simmilar to a bikini-go-bye-bye on my 21st birthday. And by similar I mean the only difference was that instead of passion fruit juice it was cranberry juice. And by “a drink” I mean I had 2 of my own and the remainder of a drink some girl couldn’t finish (it wasn’t even half gone).
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May 4th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
i live near the Ft Walton area. there are some great clubs in the area. if you venture to crestview (where i actually reside) hellenback is the only decent bar there. they have a ban on country music inside the premises.
if you can find a bartender to make you a proper flaming dr pepper, i recommend it. too many of those makes you do stupid things. like jump in the backseat of some random peoples convertable as they are pulling out of the parking lot
captcha: Douching 101. what?!….why….
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Andrew reply on May 11th, 2009 4:33 pm:
I went to Hellenbacks… Great beer selection. but I didn’t get to drink much as I was Designated Driver that night.
captcha: maniacal Chrystal… How does it know about my ex?!?
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May 5th, 2009 at 2:35 am
I remember drinking with Marines. I was a Corpsman. We’re the only Squids they like. I also remember discovereing a drink called a Mojo. I couldn’t tell you what was in it. But it came in a ptcher. And the bartender gave me a water glass and said “Only drink two.” After the second one I didn’t feel anything. So I finished the pitcher and ordered another. It was like that E.F.Hutton commercial. Everyone turned and stared at me. One of the more experienced guys said “If he’ll drink it, I’ll buy it just to watch.” I finished the second pitcher and bought a third and was splitting it with some Marine that I was playing pool with.
Then the bartender said “It’s two O’clock. All white people get out.”
I remember still feeling completely sober as I pushed the door open. I took my first step out of the bar and never remember taking the second step. I was suddenly back in my barracks several hours later, trying to flush the chair I’d just thrown up in.
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paula reply on May 5th, 2009 1:52 pm:
An old friend was a Corpsman with a Marine unit in ‘Nam. He used to tell about a barfight he watched while out drinking with some of his guys: when it started getting mean, the Marines picked him up and sat him on top of the bar, then handed him a couple pitchers of beer. He said he had a great view of the whole barfight, secure in a protective Marine perimeter: his guys did NOT want any damage to their corpsman OR their beer!
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May 5th, 2009 at 4:37 am
ah alchohol.. I had the privilage of becoming an “honorary brittish citizen” during my visit to the UK a few years ago. How to do this: you get roaring drunk with a few welsh guys who then drag you home and dump you on your doorstep. Then you pass out on said doorstep using a newspaper as a pillow. You wake up with the hobby-bobby standing over you poking you with a nightstick asking in a very heavy accent “ey you arrite mate?” Mutter something at the bleary officer, throw up on his feet, then crawl into your house and sleep it off halfway up the stairs.
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May 5th, 2009 at 5:49 am
The story, the posts, I laughed til I cried.
Alkyhol, or Vitamin A. Half the reason I got dropped at from Russian at DLI – nympho girlfriend was part of the other half.
I had to stop drinking in Germany. That last night, I ran from the GP medium towards the dumpsters. I woke up in the mud with another urge to heave & continued my trek to the dumpsters. I woke up by a dumpster & finished the mission. I woke up in my sleeping bag, zipped to the chin with another urge. Zipper was jammed. Open laundry bag full of clean uniforms by sleeping bag quickly got dirty again.
Dry heaves til dawn.
I had an epiphany: maybe alkyhol ain’t for me. I’ll still wear the lampshade on my head, but I’m keeping to drinking a virgin rum and coke.
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May 5th, 2009 at 6:46 am
what you said about Marines is the truth. My dad was a corpsman with the marines. He and his Marines went to a club and a fight started. One of the Marines picked my dad up, sat him on the bar (my dad was 105 soaking wet back then), put a drink in each and and stood in front of him during the brawl. He says that’s one of his best memories.
captcha: duval ask…duval ask for another beer!
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May 5th, 2009 at 7:56 am
The best memory I have of alcohol doing strange things to people was when my ship was pulled into Sandog, and one of my buddies had just received a Dear John letter. He wrote out a big letter back calling his ex all kinds of nasty things, put it in the mail box, then went out on the town to get rip-roaring drunk.
He came back later that night completely gone, and decides that he really doesn’t want to say all of those things to his ex, so he tries to break into the post office and retrieve the letter.
Shore Patrol picked him up trying to scale a barbed wire fence at 2am, returned him to the ship, where he then spent the next 45 days on restriction and lost a chevron.
The kicker? It turns out he had put the letter in the ships mailbox, and it had yet to actually get transferred to the base’s postal system, so even if he had managed to get into the post office on base, he would never have found the letter.
Captcha: loss vileness (heh… appropriate)
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May 5th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Oh Gods! Two dollar zombies at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard EM club. I do remember feeling great until last call when I stood up and the motion didn’t stop until I was face down on the dance floor. I woke up the next morning in one of the closed barracks and still made it to class on time; not functional, but on time…
Then there was the night in downtown Idaho Falls when I orderd a drink that came with a cherry. For the rest of the night I carried that cherry from bar to bar, only ordering drinks that came with cherries. All the others got eaten, but that one marinated in drink after dring. And by the time the night was over, that cherry was REALLY drunk! I was fine until I ate it. That may have been the night that an Ensign math instructor on TDY from Nuke School walked into a bar in downtown IF and said, “I smell sheep shit!” After the XO bailed him out he was restricted tot he site for the rest of his assignment there.
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May 5th, 2009 at 10:30 am
a fellow airman made the mistake of getting drunk and passing out on a water bed. He said with the hang over and full motion water bed it took him 30 minutes slowly creep to the edge of the bed and escape.
We finally cured him of his drinking habit when he showed up hung over on Saturday and had to sit in on a 2 hour engine run on a B52G. If it wasn’t for the emergency O2 bottle I don’t know if he would have lived.
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May 5th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Glad to say I’m tee-total. I don’t need no steenking alkymahol to act like an utter twonk. :D
The main post does kinda remind of the Royal Marines and Para’s when in the bar (Never the same bar. Never!) At least ‘I can’t Feel My Face!’ is sane compared to the Brit forces game of ‘Freckles’.
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Viktim reply on May 5th, 2009 11:24 am:
Oh come on! You can’t hint at something like Freckles without explaining it…
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Speed reply on May 5th, 2009 11:57 am:
Take a plate. Take a dump on the plate. Place the plate in the center of a table. Everyone puts there faces close by. Slam another plate on top of it. Cleanest face buys a round.
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Viktim reply on May 5th, 2009 12:48 pm:
Gawd. Sorry I asked… :(
David reply on May 5th, 2009 4:01 pm:
Ooooh! So thats what it means to be shitfaced!
Michael huffing – he never buys a round at this game!
Grayson reply on May 5th, 2009 11:56 am:
I want you to explain all about this game called ‘Freckles’.
And how you came to learn about it. Please? Pretty Please?
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Anonymous and STILL Employed reply on May 5th, 2009 11:57 am:
What about some of the ones like “God save the Queen”? it sucks to be the only guy at the bar without a chug reflex when somebody suggests these games. SUCKS OUT LOUD.
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Minty reply on May 5th, 2009 12:22 pm:
I’m sensing some bitter memories. . .
Captcha: “Caulked in.” Yeah, that was a good time not had by all.
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oneluckyduck reply on January 24th, 2011 7:59 pm:
“This is a very simple game amd is best played whilst playing another drinking game at the same time. One coin is selcted at the start of the night and all you have to do is drop the coin into someones pint. They then have to down the drink whilst the national anthem is sung at a very large volume until they have finshed it completely, saving the queen (found on back of all coins) from drowning.”
This one?
:)
Captcha-sallow member -…he was quite the sallow member of the club, always loosing the blood out of his face when he remembered the “games” they used to play.
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May 5th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
BNCOC, 1993, FT Devens Mass. Friday night started at 1500. One of our class mates had his bartender cert. We started with Manhattans and Bloody Maries in the barracks (highly illegal), might of made it to the NCO club, or not. More drinking. Remember being tucked into my bunk by my mates…
Woke up on the train to Boston (fully clothed thankfully). Sobered up in Boston where a homeless Gulf War vet gave me advice about hydrating and taking care of myself…
Good time.
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May 5th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Never drank enough to be stupid, but I’m a girl. And a boring drunk.
I’m also not sure what the elderly lady being a White Anglo Saxon Protestant has to do with soldiers’ games.
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Fenrir reply on May 5th, 2009 9:31 pm:
Women Airforce Service Pilots in this case, I believe?
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Dave in NC reply on May 6th, 2009 7:17 am:
Hell, she might have been able to beat you guys at your own games if you’d let her play!
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Viper Chief reply on May 8th, 2009 1:52 pm:
Well, she was a pilot. the only people that drink better are the crew chiefs.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Speed, its not plates, I believe they use the cardboard beer mats. And its the one who pulls away first before the hand is brought down sharply on the top mat that pays for the drinks.
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Kurt reply on May 8th, 2009 11:58 pm:
That usually is going to be the guy with the cleanest face though.
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May 7th, 2009 at 4:07 am
Before any of you decide to be good buddies with a Marine for their fighting abilities, consider that a young Airman that I know whooped the living hell, (read: hospitalized), a Marine here in Okinawa, Japan about a year ago because he knocked over his drink and didn’t apologize. His Marine buddies watched him get his ass whooped and shook the hand of the Airman afterwards adding “Good brawl.” Marines can be assholes, even to their own kind. FYI, the Airman wasn’t some big burly dude. 5’10” and athletic is more accurate.
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May 7th, 2009 at 6:24 am
On the posts where the Marines protected their Corpsmen during brawls?
Yeah. I never got that. I think a lot of the reason I got picked to be a corpsman is because I could carry a wounded Marine by myself pretty easily. When all of the stuff in my story happened I was 275 very solid pounds at six feet. I had a 54″ chest and a 38″ waist.
I’ve still got the 54″ chest.
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May 7th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Do not fuck with the alcohol posessed by Marines. Severe bodily harm will result, including but not limited to castration, eviseration, and actually having your head shoved up your own ass.
I have friends who are Marines. Drinking with them is an enlightining and possibly life changing (or ending) experience.
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May 8th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
These lovely tales of the intoxicated remind me of one particular story I was told by a friend in the SCA. This particular story was actually converted into a poem too, and was quite entertaining in both forms. But the short version is the friend who will remain nameless waited until the obnoxious drunk was drunk enough to stop being obnoxious. aka passed out. They then took up a collection in the bar to buy this man a bus ticket. now they collected enough money for one of two options. One of them was a round trip ticket from Chatanooga (I think it was chatanooga. Somewhere in East TN at any rate) to nashville, or a one way ticket to Memphis. Well, they figured this poor drunken sod might like to go see graceland, so off to memphis they sent him, after convincing the bus driver it was his life long dream to do so. Well poor schmuck wakes up, not knowing how the heck he wound up a couple hundred miles away from home, or where his wallet was. Oh he got in touch with his dad via collect call, and his dad wired money to him. Which he couldn’t get because his ID Was in that same missing wallet (The wallet was in his coat which got left at the bar).
Stories like that are why I usually follow the rule of “If I can’t remember how many drinks I’ve had, I’ve had too many”
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Andrew reply on May 11th, 2009 4:40 pm:
Don’t you mean, “If I can’t remember how many drinks I had, I must have been a good night.”
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Kurt reply on May 11th, 2009 6:55 pm:
For the most part yes, but there have been a few incidents where I’ve had a really BAD time from drinking too much. This will really only make sense to people in the SCA, but last time I had too much to drink I decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with a tuchux at pennsic.
Captcha
House endorses. And if a fictional dr says it’s good, you know it must be.
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May 10th, 2009 at 6:57 am
So since everyone is sharing their drinking stories i thought I would share two of mine:
So i was stationed in Korea for a year. When New Years rolled around I decided to go to the bar with a couple frinds of mine. I had about $1,000 in my pocket, more than enough, right? Well read on.
I was doing jager bombs, wich since I knew the bar tender she charged me 3 dollars insted of the 6 dollars they cost. So im slamming them down and next thing I know i am waking up in my hotel room.
I thought “I wonder how much money I have left” I had no cash in my pocket, opened my wallet and found about 500 dollars worth of charges. So now i am up to 1500 dollars of jager bombs, which were only 3 dollars each…. so then i talk to one of my friends and he paid for another 500 dollars worth of drinks for me…. 2000 dollars of jager bombs, no memories, and no jail time…. I dont know many people who can do that.
Second story: So i am at fort bragg out four wheeling in my NCO’s vehicle with a couple friends. After have a couple cases of bud light (by cases I mean 2 twenty packs) I decided that I would try and take this 2WD through a sand pit in which very few 4 wheel drives can make it, and those that do are very beefy four wheel drives. I then say “Hold my beer and watch this” i then here several “Oh shits” and “Oh fucks” come from the back of the vehicle. I sunk the 2WD to the floor boars in the sand. Now it is 2am, my NCO’s vehicle burried, and Im drink as hell, and there was no way I was calling my NCO to bail me out. I had to call a towtruck. So it cost me over 100 dollars to get the vehicle towed out of the sand pit… all in all it was a good night and alot of fun was had…
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May 20th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
The next Pennsic you’re at, make sure you find Duke Flieg and ask him to do “Tippy Toe Tuchux”.
:-)
Tuchux are INSANE.
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Ali reply on May 20th, 2009 1:47 pm:
Aaaaand that was AIMED at Kurt.
[sigh]
captcha: 9,072,685,687 junking
Yea, that’s about right.
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May 22nd, 2009 at 11:52 pm
First I need to say that I got my college degree several days before I turned 21… I go off to law school and the first real week all of us 1Ls are following the tradition and went to a bar right next to the school literal I could see it from my dorm window and make it there in under a minute from my dorm room on the 2nd floor… my very nice friends send me up to the bar by myself after feeding me shots most of the night which did not do anything to me except a little buzzed
I make a bad mistake and tell the bartender that I cannot remember what my friends told me to get and that I just turned 21 and I wanted to get drunk… one crazy mexican later (still not sure what is in that exactly) I have the bright idea to get another one. The bartender gives me this one for free since he was shocked that I could still walk after the first one!
Fast forward 12 hours and I am still drunk but the nice spinnyness of the world is not so nice anymore… 24 hours later I am still half drunk but also hangover
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David B reply on March 5th, 2014 6:28 pm:
A Crazy Mexican consists of the following: Beer, rum, tequila, and I can’t remember the rest. I saw my uncle make one once.
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February 25th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
2008 Marine Corps Birthday Ball, Monterey California. I am the only male airman there (I’m arm-candy for a female friend of mine in the Marine Detatchment there). This party was enlightening and fun. The first time I’ve ever had an NCO order me to get drunk, and the only time I’ve smoked cigars in service dress. After the party at the hotel got lame, we went into town and joined some Marines (in their dress blues) as they celebrated at the Brit down the street.
Fun time, must talk my way into another one of those Marine Corps Balls.
Another fun time was the 2008 Monterey Beer Festival. I didn’t go (they sold out when we were within sight of the ticket stand), but I ended up going drinking downtown with a second-degree friend, a guy who was dating a girl I knew in the training Battalion there.
We started at the Crown and Anchor, where I was introduced to Irish Car Bombs (this becomes important in a bit), and I followed my first one up with a shot of Bushmills, then had another car bomb. Then we wandered over to the Brit, where we had a few more Car Bombs and some more shots.
So, about five o’clock in the evening on a Saturday, I am hanging onto the bar lest it toss me off my stool, confessing my love to the 45 year old bartender lady, who shoots me down on the basis that I am young enough to be her son (you know, SOME women her age would think that a plus!)
We walk up Sobriety Hill back to the gate and I head back to my dorm. I wake up later that evening to find that I have drunk-texted, drunk-emailed, and drunk-MySpace-Messaged something like a dozen people. Mostly I only found out about this when one of them replied. I warned a Specialist in the Army that I know that alcohol is dangerous (she was stationed in Korea for two years, so the safety brief was un-necessary in her case).
I think I also ended up having a drunken-IM conversation with a girl I knew from college explaining that she was the reason I enlisted, but that I didn’t do it to impress her. Yeah, other people learn stuff when I get drunk.
Captcha: indulge that – well, that’s what the alcohol says.
Most of my other drinking stories involve the sci-fi club at my college.
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March 25th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Yeah, drinking can do a lot of things to you:)
Like this guy into martial arts going out with his friends doing one of those fly-wheeling kicks when you spin in the air, and a drunk friend trying the same ending up flat in the street, inches away from the wheels of a braking truck, and if you haven’t been there yourself :) it’s quite an experience to watch.
Or like the night I was on a illegal club, the last thing I remember is building ‘lego towers’ with my empty beer cans, watching them fall over, the reason they didn’t throw me out :) I knew the bouncer.
I ‘woke up’ to consciousness somewhere near the harbor, walking in the morning, without remembering how I got there at all, several miles from that club and strangely enough without an hang over too? It was the first and last time that ever happened to me, thank God. Quite scary in fact as I lost several hours…
Nah, drinking can be fun, but watch out..
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