Buenos Noches!
I have been in Indiana for only 4 weeks, and already some hilarious things have happened. I feel that now is an appropriate time to begin my TOP HILARIOUS THINGS!!! This will be rank ordered by less hilarious to most hilarious. Enjoy.
Coming in at number 4:
The Army is full of traditions and often, each unit has its own traditions. C CO is no exception. Their biggest and most well kept is that of getting "jumped-in." This refers to the time honored tradition where the "new guy" gets welcomed to the company by getting beat up and usually constrained to a certain area. This tradition is not hindered by rank. I was jumped in in Las Cruces. It was after final formation, I was standing behind my platoon. My platoon sergeant was getting ready to release them when, he had them turn around and charge me. I made it about 10 feet before I was caught. They picked me up, gave me a few punches and taped me to a tree outside the commander's office... classic.
2nd platoon takes the tradition a bit further. They include birthdays. As many of you know, my birthday was February 2nd. This brings me to round 2:
I made it through the 2nd with only 1 person knowing it was my birthday. The only reason he knew was because we share the same birthday. Then Feb 3rd happened. My platoon was away training that day and I, unfortunately wouldn't see them until the next day. I figured I was in the clear. Then it happened. I am learning spanish on Rosetta Stone and a soldier from a different platoon asked me how to say "Happy Birthday" in Spanish. It didn't click, especially since I just learned that. I said happily, "Felize Complianos!" "That's right" they said. And before I knew it, I was hoisted up and given 10 birthday spankings. This isn't fun and gentle. The orchestrator in all this was SSG Elmore, a former 2nd platooner. I figured he was talking with my platoon and this counted as my birthday jump in. So, I called my platoon sergeant and "thanked" him for the birthday wishes. Well, he didn't know it was my birthday and it tipped him off to the other person that had the same birthday. Mistake. They jumped him that night.
I still wasn't in the clear. When my platoon got back they had to jump me, the first one didn't count. That's only fair.
By the way, it has been a busy 2 weeks for birthdays. There have been 5 already.
Number 3:
I have a driver who also doubles as my radio operator. He's a cool guy, kinda young, from Belen, NM, but now lives in Albuquerque. He admittedly hasn't driven very much on snow, but we gave him some training and figured he would be alright since we are in 4WD Humvees. Wrong. We're driving back from a mission, I'm the lead vehicle and the roads are pretty icey. As we start going down a hill, my driver gets worried about our speed. He touched the breaks and before I knew it, we were spinning. All I could think while we went round and round was, "We're going to hit that tree. We're going to hit that humvee. We're going to hit that tree. We're going to hit that humvee." We did 1 3/4 spins before we finally stopped. It was pretty scary. I'm told that my eyes were huge. No big deal, right? Well, this really shook my driver. I don't want to fire him because it was a little mistake and he is a really good radio guy, but now he is scared to drive over 10 mph. I don't really know what to do. It's like when Goose died and and Maverick lost his edge. If only Viper were here.
Number 2:
It was one of those miserable days where the snow melted, but refroze as a solid sheet of ice. What day was that? Everyday. Any way, on this day it was particularly dangerous because on the roads it was truely black ice. We had to walk to the airfield and although we were walking on top of the black ice we couldn't see it. We only knew it was there because we all fell. So, we're headed back to the company area after the training and the next platoon is passing us on the way to training. They are approaching the black ice when one of my soldiers calls out, "you guys better hurry, they're going to stop the training in 5 minutes if you guys don't get there." This was less than truthful. The all took off at a slow, safe trot. It didn't matter. Everyone of them fell. Luckily we got it on video.
And now, the TOP HILARIOUS THING OF ALL:
One of the other Platoon Leaders, 2LT Chris Tebo, is from Cameroon. He's 37 years old, is the fastest runner in the company, and he is overall a pretty cool guy. HOWEVER, he is very gullible. Let me paint the picture:
We sleep in an open bay with 25 people. There are 5 officers, all LT's. The rest is enlisted personnel. We all like to joke around and give each other a hard time. One night, someone turned out the lights early. Tebo yelled at them to keep the lights on until "lights out" and then turned them back on. SSG Elmore, to give Tebo a hard time, yelled across the bay, "Hey sir!" clapped his hands twice and had someone who was positioned at the light switch that is located out of sight, turn off the lights. He then clapped once, and the lights came back on. We all thought it was kind of funny, like a "Clap On" commercial or something. Well... Tebo freaked out. He did not connect that someone was around the corner. He cursed very loudly and said that Elmore was practicing witch craft. We couldn't tell if Tebo was joking, but figured it best to go on with the ruse. Elmore clapped twice again, and the lights went out. Tebo immediately turned the lights back on. Elmore clapped, lights out. This went on for a few minutes and we all thought it pretty amusing. We figured Tebo would figure it out, but... this event happened in week 1 and Tebo still hasn't figured it out. In fact, the guys have convinced Tebo that he too knows how to turn out the lights by clapping. They told him, "just picture yourself turning out the lights, clap twice, and the lights will go out." Well, it worked. Tebo thinks he knows witch craft.
On a side note, they are about to cross the line. There is an App on iPhone that allows you to add a ghost like figure to pictures. They took a picture of Tebo at his bunk, added the figure and showed him the picture. He freaked out and was preparing to leave the bay and sleep somewhere else. I was just coming out of the shower as he was starting to pack up. I felt bad for the guy, and much to the chagrin of my counter parts, told him the truth.
I hope this has entertained you as much as it has us. Enjoy your weekend.
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