Chapter 10 - "Sgt.Topbunk Rises Again"

       School's in session! Have a seat! Here we go! How to Succeed in the Military 101. There are three simple rules- Be on time. Do your job. And shut the fuck up. It's that simple! That's all you need to know to have a successful career. Seems easy, but yet these 3 simple tasks are hard for a lot of people. The second point for me especially, but I'm working on it.

      I have always taken much pride in the fact that I am never late to work. The last time I was late to work...June 11th 2001. Yes. I shit you not. It has been that long. And oddly enough, that same day was my first real day in the Air Force after leaving basic training and my job's technical training school. That's a hell of a way to start a career and make a first impression. At least being known as, 'that late fuck' to everyone at my first base helped hide the fact that I wore my undershirt backwards on my first day. It was horrible. It's my first day and I'm late and the front of my shirt looks like I'm wearing a short sleeve turtle neck in June. Welcome to the Air Force. Try not to be a fucking idiot.

       I was late because I got a ride with someone I just met, who I didn't know at the time, was a chronic late person. It's hard to trust people in the military. People have different priorities and most of the time it's a 'me first' mentality. There's also always someone out to get you and to make an example of you. In the summer of 2005 I was TDY with 7 other guys and we had a plane to catch. We were told to be outside our hotel ready to go by 6. (By some miracle, we actually had a flight that DIDN'T leave before 630. I can only assume that someone clicked on the wrong button when making the reservations.) I woke up a little later than I planned but still made it outside at 557. I looked at my clock before leaving just to make sure. I wouldn't be able to go on living if I was late to something.

       I was stressing out, cutting it too close, but at least I made it on time. I got outside and everyone was already there waiting on me. There was a Captain in our group and he said, 'Pfft, there's always one.' Ya. He was implying that 'I' was the late person. He was implying that, even though he didn't know me and only met me once before, that 'I', was the kind of person who was typically late to things. Now, I'm a lot of things. Not all of them good things, but you can describe me a lot of different ways. I can take criticism and jokes and there isn't much people can say to offend me or hurt my feelings and make me angry. I have some pretty thick skin, basically because...I just don't give a fuck.

      I lead my life by the greatest quote of all time from the movie Office Space...'It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.' But there is one thing I do care about, and that's being on time. And this mother fucker was calling ME late??? Oh heeeeelllll naaaww! That's like calling Jesus selfish or a women comedian funny and original! Shit just ain't right!

      I forgot that Captain's name but I remember his face. It's the kind of face you just want to punch even if he just handed you ice cream in a waffle cone with sprinkles on top. I don't really have any enemies or people in my life I truly hate, but that day I ripped out a piece of notebook paper and put a title on top...'My Shit List.' I wrote down that Captain's name with a Sharpie. I then used a highlighter over it just to make it more prevalent...which then actually smeared the Sharpie ink a bit. So I wrote his name down AGAIN, but this time even bigger!

     That was almost 8 years ago and I have moved bases 3 times since then and lost my Shit List a long time ago. I started a new one last year though. Since I don't remember that Captain's name, the top name on my list, and the only name on my list, is simply just, 'that douchebag.' I look at my list every night before I go to bed and think about all who have wronged me in my life. It doesn't take me too long since there's only one guy on the list so luckily I don't lose too much sleep over it.

      It's really hard, but to make it in the military, you can't let people get to you. There are assholes everywhere. Every group and every shift you work...there's always one. There's always at least one late person...NOT me, and always at least one asshole ruining everyone's good time. And sometimes this asshole won't even be your stereotypical asshole. He won't be the mean angry guy or the douchbag calling people late. He will be a different kind of asshole. The kind of asshole you just can't stand. Not because he's mean and loud and gets mad at you because your shoe is untied, but because he's the one-upper. The biggest asshole of them all.

     When you're in the military, you get the opportunity to see and do a lot of cool things. People have stories about combat missions, meeting famous people, and about all their crazy trips to far off places. We may not be millionaires partying with rock stars in Hollywood, but military guys still have some of the best stories in the world. You get a group of military guys together who have been in awhile and they can talk about their same experiences in similar situations for hours. Everyone will be sitting around talking about some Thai hooker they picked up and brought back to their 30 dollar motel next to a truck stop outside Albuquerque, and out of nowhere Sergeant One-Upper comes walking in talking about a blonde Ukrainian model he picked up at a 5 star hotel in Prague. And the next day he went swimsuit shopping with her and all her model friends. And since they are European, they only needed bikini bottoms and he had to judge how they all looked on the girls while they were topless. Sergeant One-Upper then walks away from the group back to his office but still within hearing distance so that he can pull out another bullshit story from his back pocket when the time comes.

      No matter what, there will always be a guy with a better story than you. Someone who will always top your best story and make you feel so small. You were shot at and the bullet missed? Sergeant One-Upper was shot in the chest....twice, and survived by doing an operation on himself. You went skiing in Aspen? Sergeant One-Upper once taught a skiing class to Sherpas on Mt. Everest for a year. You went sky diving? Sergeant One-Upper once landed a 747 because the pilot had a heart attack. You once met George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign? Sergeant One-Upper has Bill Clinton on speed dial and plays poker with him every Thursday night.

      I hate one-uppers but at least they're entertaining. Not much else to do during a 12 hour night shift than to listen to stories. I don't talk much at work though. When it comes to speaking, I'm not a good story teller. I can't do any impressions either. I really wish I could. I can do a pretty good Elmo but that's about it. I don't have many stories that involve Sesame Street so I rarely ever get to bust it out. I just pray that one day I work with someone who faintly sounds like Elmo just so I can do an impression and finally start being funny. But that will probably never happen. So instead, like always, I will bring up the topic of Star Wars to a group of nerds and just sit back and wait for the perfect moment to do my Jar Jar Binks impression. It's the same as my Elmo impression, just slightly more racist.

      But not talking and shutting the fuck up is essential to a successful career. You stay out of trouble a lot more by keeping quite. If you start forming opinions and having ideas, people begin to worry and think you're about to start a mutiny. And also, ignorance is bliss. The less you know, the less you can be blamed. Especially if you get captured and become a POW.

     I would be a great prisoner of war. America would be safe. I would get the shit beat out of me a lot though. The enemy would keep yelling at me and getting so agitated. 'Seriously!! I don't know shit! I just put boxes on planes! They don't tell me anything! All I can tell you is how many gallons of shit the toilet on a C-17 can hold!' Just do what you know and don't try to over think things and ask stupid questions. No one joined the military because they're a Rhodes Scholar. If we WERE really smart, we'd get a normal high paying job and not have to spend half a career in the Middle East. Even if you joined the military because you're really patriotic and want to help this country...if you were really smart, you could still be patriotic and get a government job wearing a tie while fighting terrorism instead of wearing combat boots. Ok, but you're patriotic AND a badass and want to kill terrorists yourself? That's cool. But then why did you enlist in the Air Force? Because you wanted to be in the military but not do 'military' things. Understandable. War is hell. But we ARE in the military. We take orders. That's all we do. Don't think about it. Be on time. Do your job. Shut the fuck up. Follow my 3 simple rules and you will make your 20 years in the military out alive and be able to avoid an ample amount of, "you got a minute"s. That is of course...until you decide to write a blog. I mean story. It's a story!

      I hate calling this a blog. I like to refer to it as a story. You can't have chapters in a blog anyway. I would love to see this as a book, and maybe one day it can be, but when you release a new chapter for everyone to read every couple weeks, then it seems like a blog...which it's not. I would like to say that this is a,'book in progress,' but that's just gay. You want to punch anyone who says they're in the middle of writing a book but you can't because then it would be a hate crime since all authors are gay. It's true. Google it. People making metaphors about sunsets?? Total fudge packers.

       I never thought that writing an elaborate story about bunk beds, poop, and luggage carts would get me in trouble, but there I was...'Hey you got a minute?' Aaannnnd here we go.

      I was taken to a back room by our two shift supervisors. A million things started to enter my mind. I was trying to think where I could have fucked up. I was going over in my head every little thing I did the past couple days, but I was sin-free. I couldn't think of anything. But then I started thinking that maybe I had a family emergency at home. I was getting really worried. It was only an 8 second walk to this other room and already my mind was about to explode.

     The door opens and there were 2 desks and a chair in-between them. I sat in the middle chair as if I was about to get questioned on a murder that just happened. The door closes and one of the Master Sergeants slams down a printed out copy of this very story you're reading on the desk. It was stapled together and looked like a screenplay or a large children's book. It was the closest I've ever been to having one of my stories published. I actually felt a bit proud at that moment. My work had come to life. But suddenly in a harsh tone I was asked, 'Can you explain this?' And the first thing that came to mind was, 'Those are words. You put words together to form a sentence. When you have enough sentences, you then form what is called a paragraph. Each paragraph should express a different idea but still somehow relate to the previous paragraph. You do this enough times, and then you have yourself a story!'

       That wasn't the answer they were looking for. I was getting in trouble for my blog. I couldn't believe it. The past couple days people I didn't even know or ever talked to were telling me how much they enjoyed it. I would walk by people's desk and see them reading it with big smiles on their faces and it was the happiest I've been since being in Afghanistan. People were forwarding it to all their friends too. It had over 500 views in a month, and 300 of those came within the last 10 days and I only sent it to 5 people.

     I was feeling really proud of myself. But apparently the blog got forwarded to a few too many people and I was told that 4 of those people got offended by it and didn't even feel comfortable working with me now. I was shocked. This can't be right. They must be joking. They HAVE to be joking. I just started to assume that they WERE joking. One of the Master Sergeants did a joke like this before. Pretended to get people in trouble and then said he was just fucking with them. I thought the same thing was happening. I started to feel confident and smiling again just waiting for them to say, 'No we're just fucking with you, we thought it was hilarious!' But we have been in this back room a few minutes now and it still hasn't happened yet.

     They kept asking me if I saw anything wrong with my story and if I actually thought it was a good idea to write. I told them that I didn't see anything wrong with it and lots of people have come up to me to tell me that they enjoyed it so I kept writing. Then one of the Master Sergeants began reading parts of my story out loud. In the most serious computer based tone ever, as if Ben Stein was talking about Clear Eyes but in a slightly angry manner, out loud he read, 'Give our single troops something to look forward to. She doesn't need to be hot. These guys have been in Afghanistan for 6 months. They'd fuck a young Filipino man if he had a blonde wig on. I think I'm less of an Air Force sergeant, more of a prophet.'

       Now, the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Ok, you're butchering it. Your timing is way off. You gotta put some emotion into it.' And he asked me, 'Is this funny to you?' I didn't know how to answer it. That specific moment in time was hilarious to me because I couldn't believe it was happening, but him reading my jokes to me like an angry Spock from Star Trek did not make my writing seem funny at all. I told him that I received a lot of positive feedback from my blog and I write certain things just for shock value and to get a laugh.

    Both Master Sergeants kept looking at me as if I was crazy. And at this point I still don't know if they were serious or just fucking with me. He continued reading out loud...'After dumping whiskey on that girl, I had no idea she would light a match and start smoking. Who knew 50 dollar whores were so flammable.' I put my head down. I muttered the words, 'Please stop' to myself because I was about to start crying from holding in so much laughter. I thought he was picking out the most outrageous parts of my story just to get me to laugh. He wanted me to crack up just so it would give him an excuse to get more angry at me. But I held my own. He kept spitting out horribly rendered jokes I wrote about farting, jerking off, and Afghani cleaners but I stood my ground. I was like a rock. He kept throwing lines at me trying to break me but I just sat there and took it like a man. 'You're name is Tobey! Say it boy!' 'No, it's Kunta!!'

      I never thought I'd be able to add a Roots reference to my story, but low and behold...I did it!

    It wasn't just the offensive nature of my blog that my bosses were concerned about. I wrote about reaching a breaking point and flipping out while deployed, and the Master Sergeants took it as literal. I know it's common practice to, 'watch out for the quiet ones.' Most mass murders, human skin wearing, penis tucking, and the craziest criminals acts are typically done by the quiet loner type. But sometimes people are quiet simply because they just don't give a fuck. If a person doesn't talk much, maybe it's because he doesn't have anything to say or just minding his own damn business and would like some peace and quiet for once. 99% of all quiet people are good people. It's that 1 percent of weirdos that fuck it up for everyone else who just want to live their life peacefully. It's a stereotype against quiet people. It's not fair. It's like saying all Muslims are terrorists. That's not true. I have met hundreds of Arabic and Muslim people throughout my career and I'm pretty certain that 2 of them were most likely not connected with the Taliban. Of course I don't know for sure, but I felt pretty good about those 2.      
   
      The three of us sat in that back room for roughly 15 minutes. It was 15 of the most awkward minutes of my life. It was me trying not to laugh and them trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with me. People have been trying to figure that out for years. They were going to need a lot more than 15 minutes. So from the suggestion of them and our Senior Master Sergeant, they wanted me to go to the Combat Stress office at the hospital to get my head examined. Yup. Seriously. Combat Stress. The closest I've ever been to any combat was the occasional Nerf gun battle.

     They wanted to send me to an office where Army and Marine soldiers go after they have literally seen the horrors of war and came close to death themselves. And then there's me...'Hi, I wrote a blog about farting and married chicks having sex inside porto potties that was offensive to 4 people because they don't know me. Can you cure me of my wrongness and give me a lollipop so I feel better? Oh, you want me to wait in line behind that Marine who got his leg blown off? Well ma'am, that leg is gone. It's not coming back. But we have 4 individuals in the Air Force currently with hurt feelings that aren't going to get any better until you help me. I suggest you drop what you're doing and make this your number one priority before those 4 individuals tie up all the phone lines calling their mommies.'

       I went to the clinic, but during the pre-screening process, the doctor deemed it all bullshit and sent me away. Lucky there won't be any 'clinically insane' remarks in my medical records because of this. Just an official diagnosis of, 'fucking weird.'

     It's been a few weeks now since all this happened and I'm still waiting for my bosses to come up to me and say, 'Hey we were just fucking with you!' It would help to restore my faith in humanity and the United States Air Force. Because I have a dream....

      It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. A dream where we live by the creed that all jokes are created equal. I have a dream that cranky old men and young wise crackers can sit down at the same table and share a laugh. I have a dream that rednecks in the state of Mississippi can say a joke with the word 'fag' in it with gay people present and have no one get offended. I have a dream today my friends. I have a dream that men will not be judged by their personality or kindness, but on the timing of their 'that's what she said' jokes. I have a dream that little white boys from Alabama can hold hands with little black boys and share a meal of watermelon and fried chicken while making jokes about how stereotypes are true as the grape drink is passed around the table! I have a dream! Let offensive jokes ring out from the mountain tops of Colorado! Let offensive jokes ring out from the curvaceous slopes of California! Let offensive jokes ring out from the hills of Tennessee! And when this happens, every faggot, gook, Jew, coon, honky, chink, guido, whore, limey, frog, kraut, gringo, and wetback will hold hands singing that old cracker spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! I don't give a fuck what you think because my jokes are free at last!'

Chapter 9- "We need a little controversy, because it feels so empty without me."

    There are lots of famous phrases in the military. Phrases that immediately strike certain images in people's minds or cause flashbacks to those that have served. Phrases like, 'Fire in the hole!', 'No one left behind!" 'Forward march!' or, 'You're my eyes Goose!' and, 'Do you think that Thai chick was really a man?' The whole Armed Forces is run on acronyms, phrases, and jargon that half it's own military doesn't even understand. Yet we all still like to say fancy military things all the time just to sound important and impress the ladies. The Army and Marines love doing it. It is always entertaining to watch them explain to a pretty female civilian what they do for a living and how they train and all the equipment they use. They start throwing out big random words and numbers and '9ers' like they are S.E.A.L Team 6 1/2 or something. When in reality, all they really do is practice shooting paper once a week.
          There is one famous military phrase though that immediately brings fear to everyone that hears it. A phrase that is never followed by anything positive. A phrase that evokes the thought, 'What the fuck did I do now?' And that phrase IS.....,'Hey you got a minute?' Uurrgh! It pains me just to write it! You will not see eyes roll any faster in the world than when someone is a recipient of a, 'Hey you got a minute?' And you're always caught off-guard when you get asked it so immediately without thinking you say, 'Yeah sure.' But it doesn't matter because a supervisor is the one who is usually asking this and they know for a FACT that you aren't busy now. He followed you around all day. He looked through your planner and turned off all the phones in the office just to make sure your ass was going nowhere.
           And it's never just a 'minute.' The question should actually be, 'Do you have 15-20 minutes to spare because I have a lot of stupid bullshit I want to talk to you about, and roughly 10 of those minutes will be used by you explaining to me why you fucked up.' Most of the time when people hear, 'Hey you got a minute?' they know exactly what the forthcoming conversation will be about. But they will answer, 'Yeah sure' in such a cool and confident manner. They don't want to admit their guilt right away. Like a detective visiting a criminal at his job... 'I don't know what you're talking about officer. I've been here the whole time.' But when you get pulled aside and taken to an empty office like it's a police interrogation room, you brain starts to go crazy. 'Does he know? Did he find out? How? There is no way he would know I wear women's underwear! And if I do, so what?? They're really comfortable and they make me feel super confident and sexy!'
          I was recently a recipient of a,'Hey you got a minute?' I had no idea why. My mind was going nuts trying to think about where I could have fucked up. I'm innocent! I didn't do anything! You got the wrong man! But then I started thinking...maybe they are just planning a surprise party for someone. I actually was part of the Party Planning Committee for New Year's. Maybe they were so impressed with that party that they wanted my expertise on another. They probably just wanted to ask me if I could rock the mic for a bit at someone's birthday celebration. I was hoping that would be it. But as two Master Sergeants put me in a quite room and sat on either side of me, I soon realized that this meeting wasn't going to be about me busting out my alter ego as D.J D-Part-z-alot.
            I haven't got into much trouble in my career. I've barely even witnessed others get into trouble. A lot of people in the military can't say that. Maybe I'm just good luck. I don't know. I don't have many war stories or seen many crazy things done by others. That's why most of my 'war stories' end up being about porto potties and farting. My most daring and heroic moments are when I have to jump down from a top bunk in the dark. Nothing too exciting. But if I can go my whole career without any serious setbacks and my biggest injury being numb legs from sitting on a toilet too long after eating tampered food cooked by some Pakistanis, I will consider my career a thriving success. The first two 'got a minutes' I ever had in my career were about 10 years ago. These were the first two times a supervisor sat me down in an empty room and tried to break me. Many have tried...none have succeeded.
        Part of my job is to empty the bathrooms on planes. Ya. It sucks. It's embaressing. But it needs to get done and every young troop in my job has to do it when they start their career. I could write a couple chapters on Shit Servicing alone but I will spare you the details in case anyone reading this is eating. But to sum up, after every shift you have to make sure the shit truck, with all the shit and piss in it from about 12 planes worth of people, is emptied out. You go over a big hole and pull a lever and a geyser of shit and piss comes flowing out like a brown Niagra Falls. And it's usually at this point, as you stare at the fast flowing steaming gush of human excrement, that a lot of young Airmen in the Air Force start to think, 'Maybe the Army wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.'
           At the beginning of each shift you are suppose to check if the truck had been emptied by the previous shift. This one fateful day...I did not. Two guys I work with went to go take the shit out of a 250 passenger MD-11 aircraft. The truck was still full of shit but they didn't know it. As the new shit started flowing in, all the old shit started shooting out of the top because it was overflowing. Now, this puts people in a very bad situation. Because you WANT to laugh...but you can't. There's a shit truck that's shooting out piss and shit like Old Faithful with two people underneath. What do you do? They can't get away because they are standing on top of the shit truck trying to keep the transfer hose upright so it doesn't come loose. They don't realize that they need to let go and cut their losses because the truck is at Chuck Norris Level....which means it's full and not taking anymore shit. Eventually they jump down and run away and the shit transfer hose pops off and all the shit in the airplane bathroom is now being dropped directly on top of the truck with little pieces of blue and brown toilet paper scattered across the flight line.
            The worst part about it is that 250 passengers are just leaving the plane watching all of this unfold. The plane is filled with troops from every military branch all headed to the Middle East. You got Marines walking off the plane getting ready to go to combat and they're seeing this like, 'Fuck...that.' You can dodge a one inch bullet, but you can't dodge 60 gallons of liquid horror dropped from above.
Since I was the last person who checked that vehicle out, I was the one who got in trouble. Though anyone who was there that day and witnessed it later thanked me for a memory they will never forget....except for the two young airmen servicing the plane that afternoon. 10 years later and they both still haven't accepted my friend request on Facebook. Some people just won't let shit go. Aaahh you see what I did? Shit? Let shit go? I ended on a pun right there. Is that smart or stupid? I don't know. But if James Bond and Arnold Schwarzenegger can make a career out of it then it's good enough for me.
           Less than a year later I backed a shit truck up and hit a light pole. I put a small scratch on the truck. A truck that already had a million of them and gets filled with shit every day. But I guess my little scratch was the straw that broke the camel's back. I only got in trouble though because I left the scene of an accident. I was picking the shit truck up from maintenance and bringing it back to my shop. That truck was sitting at maintenance inside a warehouse for a week stinking up the whole place with a stench that will linger there for months. No one in the world was happier to see me leave the scene of an accident than they were.
About 5 years go by. I didn't get in any trouble or had any shit related issues in half a decade so things were going pretty well. It was the spring of 2006. I was getting ready to go to Airmen Leadership School. ALS. It's a 6 week course you take before becoming a sergeant. But before the class started, the squadron I was in was going on an 'alert' status and were getting our vehicles ready in case we needed to ship them out. One of my good friends at the time was Mike Tolifson. We were the same age and he recently became a sergeant and I was going to join him soon. One of the vehicles we were looking over was really dirty. So, like the very professional military men we were, we started drawing dicks and writing gay comments about each other through the dirt on the car. Just basic stuff like, 'Mike is gay.' 'Dan is a fag.' You know, all the normal things 15 year old boys say to each at lunch. It didn't matter that we were in our mid 20s and defended freedom for a living.
         We would write something, the other person would see it, wipe it off, then write something else. We did this a few times. But Mike never saw the last thing I wrote. We had to leave and I forget about it. I started ALS a couple days later and recieved a phone call. Apparently the vehicle we were writing on was turned into maintenance and the Chief Master Sergeant there, the highest ranking person at the maintenance shop, saw my writing and called my commander. I had to explain why I wrote, 'SSgt Tolifson likes balls on his chin.' Yup. I also had to explain the little picture I drew of a guy with balls on his chin. So that was fun.
That Chief Master Sergeant and my commander wanted me crucified for that. Here I am, in school learning how to be a sergeant, and I'm drawings pictures of balls on people's chins. The biggest reason people were mad was because they thought I was disrespecting an Air Force sergeant. They thought I was just a young airmen who was pissed off at a sergeant and saying bad things about him. They didn't realize we were good friends and just joking around. So luckily I only ended up getting a minimal amount of paperwork, and my only real punishment was to wash 20 vehicles during my lunch break throughout the next month. It sucked. But at least none of those vehicles were shit trucks. Me-1, Karma-0.