Gotcha – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read my recent posts, you know that I have been discussing my family’s departure from Hawaii on our way to Tacoma enroute to North Dakota and the East Coast.  I was ultimately headed to the East Coast to Fort Lee, Virginia to attend the Logistics Executive Development Course.  The stops in Tacoma and North Dakota were to visit relatives.  That reminds me, I should probably tell you my theory of relatives sometime.  Not now, but some other time.  See, Einstein had his theory of relativity.  Well, my theory is kinda like that.  Only, my theory is about relatives.  Kinda neat, huh?  Oh yeah, the stop in North Dakota was also to retrieve my red Chevy van.  Well, I have talked about our journey across the United States to get to Fort Lee, Virginia.  We had some interesting exploits along the way and you can read about those exploits in some of my recent posts.  After arriving at Fort Lee, Virginia, I spent some time in my most recent posts talking about finding a place to live.  I mentioned in one post that we found a place in a trailer park in Petersburg.  And I mentioned in that post my sentiments about the manager of that trailer park.  But my family and I decided not to let that pickup driving, backwoods dwelling, varmint hunting, shotgun hauling trailer park manager interfere with our ability to get along and adapt to our new environment.  Even though we were treated as if we were “other-colored” people, we learn to improvise, overcome and adapt.  My son was getting along just fine and playing with his friends and time moved on.  Well, as I said, time moved on.  My family all got integrated into life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  Even I got accustomed to life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  My running routine began once more, I would run through the woods surrounding the school where it was purported that Civil War battles had been fought.  I ran through those woods pretty much every evening after school without fail.  No.  I never did see our Civil War ghost.  Sorry to disappoint you.  And I never encountered my old friend Jake.  What’s with that question?  And there’s another question?  What question?  That’s pretty obvious.  Who is Jake?  Either you weren’t reading carefully last time, or you have a faulty memory.  Jake is the snake (not the former pro-wrestler).  What snake?  Out West in Arizona, everyone refers to Jake as a rattlesnake.  But in Virginia, that question can be kinda tricky.  Cuz Jake can be a rattlesnake or a cottonmouth or a copperhead.  But I’m not talking about Jake today.  Cuz we were in a professional military school.  We took a physical fitness test when we first arrived at the school.  If we passed the test, we were allowed to perform physical training or physical fitness on our own schedule.  However, the cadre at the school decided one morning that every student at the Logistics Executive Development Course would run the three mile version of the trail through the woods that afternoon after school.  Why?  I have no goddamn idea.  Maybe they didn’t get any the night before.  Maybe the only clean underwear that they had left had holes in it.  Having holes in your underwear is only a problem if you are going to the doctor’s office and the nurse tells you to drop your pants.  The nurse will obviously see your holey underwear and wonder why you are too cheap to buy new ones.  She may even laugh.  Well, she probably will laugh.  And no, it’s not because she thinks you are very religious.  Oh hell no.  And by the way, she doesn’t think your underwear is very religious, either.  Not at all.  It just has too many holes.  Or the other problem could be that the only clean underwear was two sizes too small.  Another case where you probably should have invested in new ones but didn’t.  You (those) cheap bastard(s).  Of course, I don’t know what the real problem was.  I am just speculating here.  Maybe somebody pissed in their Wheaties.  Yeah.  That’s it.  Anyway, the cadre decided to make everybody run even if they didn’t want to run.  Here is the thing about making everybody run on a nonstandard course.  I told you about that course and its lone obstacle.  Remember?  You don’t?  That was in my last post as well.  Anyway, there was an obstacle toward the end of the trail.  There was this one lone tree limb laying over the trail.  It looked like a tree that had been blown down during a storm.  Obviously, nobody came out to clean up the mess and perform maintenance on the trail.  Go figure.  It wasn’t that big a tree.  A jogger in stride could easily hurtle over the tree limb.  The problem was that if you ran more than two people abreast on the trail when you approached the obstacle.  You see, there were three smaller branches that stuck out just above the main limb on the right side and parallel to the main limb.  Those three little branches were about eighteen inches to two feet long.  If you didn’t know that those three little branches were there, you might clear the main limb but trip over one of the little branches and still fall flat on your face and possibly get pretty embarrassed or hurt.  During the daylight, running on the trail was no problem because the obstacle would be obvious to the runners as they came upon it.  However, people who had never run on those trails before would not know about the obstacle.  So, we tried to warn them.  However, even the best of people cannot think of everything.  Have you ever heard of a “gotcha?”  Well, those three little branches were “gotchas.”  A gotcha is something that somebody does not know about and has not been warned about.  Yeah.  And one thing is guaranteed with gotchas.  A gotcha will always catch somebody.  That is a sure bet.  I am not a betting man, but I would lay money on that.  During that mandatory run, one female Captain went blazing through the trail.  I don’t think she had ever been on that trail before that afternoon.  In fact, I am almost positive because I had never seen her there.  She was running with two of her classmates who were to her left.  When they came to the obstacle (the tree limb).  They were still all three running abreast and made no attempt to change stride.  All three hurled the limb simultaneously.  But the female Captain got caught on one of the protruding parallel branches and fell to the ground.  She tweaked her ankle and had to be helped the rest of the way to the finish line.  Even though the warning had been put out about the obstacle before the run, an unfortunate injury had been “got”.  Though, all of the other runners were able to finish the run with no other exercises in futility.

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