Have you ever been put on the spot and had all eyes on you, but not necessarily in a good way? Say it way more of a hostile situation and you just wished you could make yourself very tiny and crawl into a dark corner and hide? Or better yet, just make yourself invisible and disappear altogether? I was in that very situation once quite by accident and I felt like a strange visitor in hostile territory surrounded by the enemy. Except, I didn’t know going in exactly who the enemy was or that I was even in enemy territory. One evening during my first tour of duty at Fort Benning, my friend Tom and I were on a thunder run. Tom was a local yokel meaning he was from the region near Fort Benning. In Fact, he was from Phenix City, Alabama, which was just across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia. Columbus was just outside the main gate of Fort Benning. A thunder run for the uninitiated is where you start at location A (in this case Fort Benning), proceed to first bar or pub “B” and drink one beverage, then proceed to the second bar or pub “C,” and so on without attracting attention to yourself (particularly from the local law enforcement establishment). You continue the run all night until last call for alcohol. At 2:30 A.M., Tom and I decided it would be a great idea to get something to eat. So, we went to the nearest International House of Pancakes (IHOP). We walked into IHOP and Tom immediately spotted two ladies he recognized. He said, “Come-on, let’s go over and say hi.” We walked over and he introduced me. Whereupon I made a very crucial and costly mistake – I opened my big mouth. I said “Hello, Ladies.” Bad plan. REALLY BAD PLAN. They screamed out in unison in a decidedly southern drawl, “He’s a Yankay!” The whole place just stopped. No dishes clanging. No chatter of people talking. Nothing. You could have heard a pin drop. I was surrounded. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I turned nine shades of red then white. I was scared to nearly to death. I pleaded, “Look, ladies, I wasn’t even in that war. My state wasn’t even a state back then. My ancestors weren’t even in that war. They were off roaming the prairie, freezing their butts, and hunting buffalo and deer. Please, it wasn’t my fault.” It didn’t matter. Nobody bought it. Nobody was drinking the Kool-Aid I was serving. It was just another exercise in futility. Needless to say, I quickly learned survival meant picking up a southern drawl.
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