Casting Pearls – An Ode to Military Humor

Well, my days serving as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, had come and gone.  And my fantastic vacation to the island of Guam with my family had also come and gone.  It’s funny how time flies when you are having fun.  And it is also funny how time seems to drag on and on when you are doing something boring and mundane.  But I must say that I didn’t really have any dull moments where I performed boring and mundane tasks, even while working on the staff of the Eighth United States Army G4.  If you read some of my posts about the time I spent on the staff of the Eighth United States Army G4, you may recall reading about the new general that came in and thought he was going to whip us all into physical shape.  Well, if you did read those posts, you may recall that what actually happened was that the general promptly fell on his face and died of a heart attack while attempting to show us just how out of shape we really were.  Oh yeah.  That went really well.  You may also remember reading about my involvement with the Hash.  More recently, I have been talking about how I was getting ready to leave Korea, and the challenges of raising small children while on active duty in the military.  More specifically, I talked about some specific escapades performed by my son whom I dubbed the master of disaster.  If you will recall from my most recent post, my son learned the hard and painful way that Superman cannot fly in real life.  Rather, he learned that Superman reacts to gravity just like everybody else.  He falls.  Then I was subjected to one of my flight from hell scenarios that I had discussed previously.  That flight from hell scenario that I had described was one where you are trapped on a transoceanic flight with screaming kids.  Except on this particular transoceanic flight, I had created the screaming kid scenario.  My son with a broken arm was the screaming kid and I could not get him to shut up to save my ass.  But I managed to rescue the day and get my kid to quiet down with the help of a little whiskey and some magic pills that a helpful doctor gave me on the plane.  I managed to do all of that without turning my master of disaster son into a booze guzzling alcoholic.  I also talked about wasting the whole first day of our vacation in Hawaii at Tripler Army Medical Center.  But I did mention that we attended a luau sponsored by the Hale Koa Hotel the evening of the first day we were in Hawaii.  In my most recent post, I mentioned that we moved to the Tripler Army guest lodge.  Oh yeah.  We still managed to waste a good portion of the second day of our vacation at Tripler Army Medical Center.  However, we did get a lot accomplished on that second day.  First, we relocated to much more spacious and much more inexpensive accommodations.  Second, we rented a vehicle to provide us transportation around the island.  Finally, we went shopping at the commissary for groceries.  On day three of our vacation, we found ourselves back at Tripler Army Medical Center.  However, this time, the doctors had good news for us.  They were able to finally put a cast on my son’s broken arm.  Of course, little did we know that was going to take another three hours.  As a result, a huge chunk of day three was eaten up while we watched the people at the hospital put my son’s arm in a cast.  When they finally finished putting the cast on my son’s broken arm, we left the hospital and headed over to Pearl Harbor.  We wanted to make sure that we checked out the USS Arizona Memorial, first and foremost and then other sites as time permitted.  I wanted to make sure that our trip to Hawaii included a visit to Pearl Harbor.  Both of my kids were begging me to take them to the beach.  But here’s the thing, we had just spent most of the first three days of our vacation at the hospital for my son’s broken arm.  Now that we had a cast on his arm, I did not want to take them to the beach just so we could wind up right back at the hospital.  Cuz I knew exactly what would happen if I let my son, Gil, anywhere near water.  In a matter of minutes, he would be up to his eyeballs in water.  And the cast on his arm?  Yeah.  He would have completely forgotten about that and it would be waterlogged and ruined.  As a result, we would be right back at the hospital.  Oh sure.  He swore on his dead grandmother’s grave that he wouldn’t get his arm wet.  Except, wait a minute.  None of his grandmothers were dead.  What kind of bullshit was that?  The kind that a parent doesn’t believe, that’s what.  So, naturally, we went to Pearl Harbor, not the beach.  Sorry kids, you lose.  Day three turned out to be only a partial bust because a cast was finally put on my son’s broken arm even though we spent a good chunk of time at the hospital, and we did manage to take in and enjoy the sights at Pearl Harbor without any other significant exercises in futility.

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