That One Guy
My dad likes to tell this story, especially around Halloween. You’ll see why. And, of course, whenever anyone starts discussing “That one guy”. You know the one. That person in every unit/workplace/class you’ve ever been in that makes you wonder how many times this person was dropped as a child. And also what your CO/boss/instructor was thinking/smoking when they allowed this person into the group. That guy that makes you say “wow, somewhere a village is missing it’s idiot”.
This is a story about that one guy. My dad was an airborne ranger (a cook, airborne ranger, the most badass cook in the army) and, of course, they had training jumps. Now, one thing that every soldier knows is that if you are going to jump out of an airplane and then hike ten miles back, you don’t bring non-essential crap. What you do bring is lots of water. Most of the guys on the plane had a couple of two-quarts plus a camelback, except that one guy. He only had a two-quart, he was worried about the weight of the extra water. He did, however, bring a large bag of candy.
While on the plane, and even while walking, this private was eating his candy. You know how chocolate makes you thirsty? Yeah, he drank all his water pretty quickly and was soon complaining of thirst. The captain, being the kind and wise CO that he was, stopped the group close to a stream and told the private that he could go and fill up everyone’s canteens, just remember the iodine. I don’t know if you know the procedure for using iodine tablets, you fill up the bottle, drop in a couple tablets, shake, wait a couple minutes for the crap to rise to the top, pour it off, wait a couple minutes and pour more off. Theoretically the water is then safe to drink.
So the private came back with everyone’s canteens and the rest of the soldiers (being more intelligent than this particular private) poured off a little extra, checking their water just to make sure. So they all start marching again, only after ten minutes, the private has to stop and go to the bathroom.
Then five minutes after that, three minutes later, a minute after that and pretty soon he was just crapping himself uncontrollably.
At this point, my father always stops and shakes his head as he describes the captain pulling out his bayonet.
“I thought he was going to gut that guy right there.”
But the captain simply cut out the seat of the guys pants.
At this point, the captain decided that they had a new mission: get somewhere a helicopter could pick this guy up before he shat himself to death. As all this is happening, the medic with the group is trying to figure out how in the heck this private got so sick so fast. Was he bit by something? Did he ingest some kind of parasite? Eat a plant?
Not quite.
The private, it turns out, was very thirsty, so thirsty that he didn’t want to wait for the iodine tablets to work in the water. So he drank the water and ate a tablet.
I’m gonna pause here and let that sink in…..
Ok, so he drank the water and ate a tablet. When the captain relayed this information over the radio to the receiving doc, (according to my dad) there was silence on the other end, then, “Could you repeat that please?”
“Sir, he ate an iodine tablet”
“He’s that guy isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir. Do you think he will survive, sir?”
“Captain, I don’t know, I’ve never even heard of anyone stupid enough to do that before.”
By that time, our intrepid private had three IV’s going, one in each arm and one in his ankle and the MedEvac guys were on the radio with their higher ups going, “Do we really HAVE to take this guy?”.
In the end they did. My dad says he never saw that private again. He’s not sure what happened, but he likes to tell the story to discourage us from eating too much candy, and, of course, to try and keep us from ever being “that one guy”.
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August 30th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
now there is some A grade stupidity *shakes head in dismay*
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August 30th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
and this is why stupidity should be painful
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August 30th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
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now let us hope that came out right
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Billy reply on August 30th, 2010 9:46 pm:
Yay! It did come out right, and it perfectly represents my feelings on this.
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Ian M reply on August 30th, 2010 9:56 pm:
VERY nice job with the picture.
Definitely a future Darwin Award nominee in that story.
I am reminded of that great line from the movie ‘Blue Thunder’: “Son, You are expected to be stupid. Don’t abuse the privilege…”.
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Billy reply on August 31st, 2010 5:36 am:
I will admit I took it from somebodies signature in the warcraft forums, but I felt it should be put here, where it would make real sense.
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Catherine reply on August 31st, 2010 11:50 am:
That…is a masterpiece. I bow to whoever made it.
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August 30th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
OK, I’m trying to picture going to the grenade range, in Basic, with this guy. Then my brain locks up–no way, no how. Some sergeant put two live grenades in this guys hand?
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August 30th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
“He’s that guy isn’t he?”
Wow its kinda hard to believe people are that stupid
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Harvest reply on August 31st, 2010 10:37 am:
Oh, I believe it. Ive been on the rifle range next to that one guy. His assault rifle jammed and the moron tries to look down the barrel of the damn thing without even remembering to put the safety back on. Thankfully the guy was transfered away before we got to play with grenades.
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August 30th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
wow…wow
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August 31st, 2010 at 2:30 am
A guy in my AIT class drank brake fluid to get high. (he died).
Myself, I could be literally *DYING OF THIRST* with a gallon jug of brake fluid in my hands, and it would never have occurred to me to drink it.
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Catherine reply on August 31st, 2010 11:52 am:
See, some people are literally too stupid to live.
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August 31st, 2010 at 7:35 am
At first I was about to call BS ’cause intestinal parasites or Giardia couldn’t possibly work that fast, but swallowing the iodine? yeah, that’s some concentrated stupid.
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Ian M reply on August 31st, 2010 10:11 am:
There was all that candy. For all we know, he was munching chocolate-covered laxatives or something sumular. All things considered, it would not surprise me at all.
Plus, Ghod knows what else he might have ingested before getting on the plane.
And there is the iodine tablet itself. Dunno what effect it might have had, but in combination with that other stuff ….
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August 31st, 2010 at 8:11 am
The saying “Didn’t know whether to shit or go blind” comes to mind.
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August 31st, 2010 at 11:15 am
ahaha! My dad, full of those little pearls of wisdom to keep us in line. You should hear his stories about his roommate.
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Anna reply on September 1st, 2010 11:23 am:
We’d love to! :D Tell us please.
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August 31st, 2010 at 1:10 pm
People that are that stupid, you have to wonder how they get out of bed in the morning and not seriously hurt themselves.
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September 1st, 2010 at 6:31 am
You know how everyone starts the day with the assumption that however smart they are is roughly average? I had a BUNCH of shifts on the ambulance where I was a super-genius by the end of the day without having to personally get any smarter.
It sounds like this guy would have pushed me up to Stephen Hawking territory.
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kat reply on September 1st, 2010 3:15 pm:
I’ve had a few ER shifts like that myself. There were some shifts where by the end I remember thinking to myself, “There really needs to be some kind of IQ test to breed”
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September 9th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Wow. Just…wow. I thought my roommate was bad. In the time I’ve know him, he’s set off a fire extiguisher in the hallway of the barracks, hit himself in the head with a breaker bar, nearly blinded himself, and walkwd away from an actively fueling aircraft, but nothing compared to this.
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