Walt's Corner

Today, I ventured out into modern civilization. I am not one to leave my loop and improvise efficiently.

What’s my loop?
Wake up.
Go to work.
Go home with maybe a pit-stop to the grocery store for some fresh vegetables for the night’s dinner.
Make dinner.
Libations.
Watch some TV. <– here is the basis for its own article. It’s like dialing someone on the phone.
Give the girls their nightly treats.
Floss and brush my teeth.
Read a book until I can’t keep my eyes open.
Go to sleep.
Repeat 4 more times.
Dinner with Carol (and maybe some friends) at Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant Friday evening if we are in town.
Enjoy my weekend.

That’s my loop and I enjoy it. Sometimes the loop will vary with 3 or 4-day weekends. Those are probably FTX’s (Field Training eXcercises, or camping). In the summer it can vary greatly on the weekends with trips to the Sacramento Mountains since we live so close and provides a welcome, cool break from the oppressive summer heat here in El Paso.

My weekends have a loop as well that usually includes a trip to the RV storage to check on our Lance, Harbor Freight, and grocery stores.

That’s it. The point is, we rarely go outside that loop and that is the way I like it. Simple. Predictable. I don’t have to deal with people. We don’t go out for the sake of going out. I’d rather stay at home and enjoy the environment we’ve created for our lives.

Which brings me to today’s story. I wanted to get Carol some new AirPods and I wanted them today. I did some looking around from the comfort of my iPad and picked out a pair from the Apple Store. If I wanted them today I could pick them up locally at our Apple Store in the Cielo Vista Mall. Fine. I’ll exit my loop and pick them up while I ventured out to Harbor Freight and the grocery store.

The mall was packed. 10am, on a Saturday, and it was absolutely packed. I had to park at the end, enter through Macy’s. Didn’t these fuckers shut down their stores? Maybe that’s why there was even parking near Macy’s. The least visited store of the mall.

Walking through the main hallway of the mall there are all these vendors selling various odds and ends. Phone cases. Jewelry. Shoes? Yes there was a vendor selling shoes, I guess. What appeared to be some youthful 17-18 year old points down to my Jesus sandals and asks if my shoes were dirty, and was that why I was wearing these. “No. I left them at your mother’s last night and this was all I could find,” I replied. Probably in my inside voice. Maybe not. I find myself caring less what people think of me the older I get.

Not quite remembering if the Apple Store is on the 1st or 2nd floor, I stop by a touchscreen information kiosk to verify. No dice. The touchscreen ain’t working. Figures. I pass another kiosk on the way with the same results. Whatever happened to the tried and true map display? I guess with how fast today’s shops come and go, it probably makes sense to go with a digital one that can be updated 3 times a week as needed. I take my chances and guess that the Apple Store is on the 1st floor and continue on. Thank fuck for that.

I proceeded to the pick up area inside the Apple Store let an associate know I was there. Within a minute my new AirPods were brought out. I asked if they had cases for these AirPods 4. She acknowledged that they did and proceeded to introduce me to another associate who showed me where they were. Carol likes purple so I picked out a purple case and the associate started to check me out, in the salesman-way, not the biblical sense. I whip out my Titanium Apple Card and the associate tells me that if I wanted I could use Apple Pay to charge it to that card and I’d be contributing 10% of the sale to something something. No fucking clue what it was, but sure. Why not. Let’s do it.

He holds his phone out to me like it’s a Tricorder and he is trying to determine if I have a phage. So I pull out my iPhone and look at it. I’m expecting something to pop up on my screen. Nothing does. Then he shows me that I have to tap a button twice on my iPhone. I tap it twice and complete the sale. He tells me I must not use Apple Pay much. Nah, bitch. I use it all the time. On websites. Or giving someone money through Messages. I don’t use it a brick and mortar store. Again, probably my inside voice.

He hands me his phone and tells me to put in my name and email address. MF. Didn’t I just pay with Apple Pay? And you’re telling me it didn’t use my name and email from it like it does at all the websites I use it at? Would have been much easier to just use the Titanium card when I first handed it to you.

Sturdy little Apple bag in hand, I leave the store and walk back towards Macy’s. I pass that shoe vendor again. Shit. He recognizes me. “You sure you don’t want some shoes?”

“No thanks. I’ll be back at your mom’s tonight. She’ll have them cleaned.”

I don’t get it. A logo change? Personally I can’t stand the restaurant and ever since I was a grown-ass adult I have never stepped foot into one. My mom loves it. As a kid it was a rare luxury to be able to eat at any dine-in restaurant. Mostly it was a McDonald’s or Burger King and was only while traveling from Michigan to Florida packed in the family station wagon. The only time we would eat at a Cracker Barrel was during special occasions. So that was maybe 2 or 3 times max? And I hated it.

Now I don’t put anyone down for liking it. More power to ya if that’s your thang. The point here is, if you like that slop, errr… sorry… that food that the CB puts out, them changing their logo is not going to have any effect on that shit. Sorry. Food. I meant to say food.

I’ve heard other say, “Well it was better than Denny’s.” Sorry. No it ain’t. But – given a choice between some breakfast staple meal, like a couple eggs, bacon, and some toast? I’d pick Denny’s over it in a heartbeat. Provided there wasn’t a Village Inn around. That’s my favorite place to hit up for breakfast, Village Inn. And I’ll order the ultimate skillet with a side of salsa.

Boxers or briefs? That’s the penultimate question, isn’t it? I know you’ve been dying to know which I prefer. I guess there’s a third option, commando, but that’s never been an option for me. My choice happens to be the result of a war story.

A war story that I had forgotten until yesterday, when my son tells me that where he thought I was going with my 2 Factor Authentication Gone Plum Wrong story. Hint – it wasn’t the story he thought. At least he got a new story out of it.

This one takes us back to Desert Shield time frame. Somewhere in the sandbox that is Saudi Arabia, before we spearheaded into Iraq. I went to sick call for something I can’t even remember now. My vitals are being taken, but I hear this guy screaming like a bitch in the cubicle next to me. I use the term “cubicle” in the most primal way. We were in a large tent called a GP-Large and there was an olive drab green piece of canvas separating us.

After vitals are taken, I’m just playing the waiting game. Waiting for the doctor to get to me. In the meantime, the doctor is in the cubicle next door. With someone screaming their fool head off. I couldn’t take it any more; I had to look. WTF was going on next to me?

Quietly I got up and moved closer to the dividing canvas. I pried the canvas open a bit for a better look. What I saw horrified me. Some dude with his pants down around his ankles. One of his balls the size of a grapefruit. That alone is enough to make a guy scream. But here’s the kicker. The doctor? He’s flicking that shit like he’s checking the ripeness of a watermelon. Then he lifts it up a bit in his hand AND DROPS IT. Asking, “Does that hurt? Can you feel this?” MF, what do you think? That shit will hurt even if it ain’t swollen. Goddamn.

When the doctor was finished with him and was seeing me, I had to ask him. What made his ball swell up like that? I wanted to know just to make sure that it never happened to me. At least while I was out here and with this particular doctor.

The doctor told me that one of his testicles had wrapped around the other and cut off the circulation. Son of a bitch! That made my nut start pulsating in pain just thinking about it. I asked him what how that could’ve happened. Now, this is what he told me. Was it true? Could be. I don’t really know, but it made perfect sense to me at the time so I took his word for it. He said that it was probably from the kid wearing boxers. He went on to explain that boxers did not provide enough support, especially when you lead an active lifestyle, such as that of a Soldier.

I woke up that morning with 8 pair of boxers and 8 pair of briefs. I ended that day with 8 pair of briefs only. I never wore boxers again.

Task & Purpose, the military-centric news site has a nice little article about the fabled stress card and proceeds to debunk it.

Like all quality myths and rumors it is based on a small grain of truth. I attended boot camp in the 80s. It was designed to put you through a lot of stress; maybe even break you if you could not handle that stress. This weeded out the ones not up to the task before they actually became a weak link later and became danger/risk to themselves or their unit.

Blanket parties. Getting smoked. Fire guard. Four hours of sleep a night if you were lucky. Bed tossing. Hell, even bay tossing – where the drills would throw all your bunk frames, mattresses, blankets, and anything else not physically secured to the building structure out the window into the quad below. Then give the platoon 8 minutes to get everything back up, in place, and back down in formation. Some Drill yelling as loud as they could 2 inches from your face spraying you with spittle. This usually resulted in shark attacks – other Drills hearing the commotion and making a beeline to where the action was, joining in on the frenzied verbal assault.

It was all a mind-fuck designed to weed out the weak and test your stress. Enter the Stress Card. Legend has it, a new recruit could whip out this magical stress card and whatever the current humiliation that recruit was experiencing would come to a sweet, blissful end.

I would gladly pay money to see a video where some weak-minded fool would try that shit with my Drill Sergeants. Bottom line, that never happened.

So how did we get here? Were there stress cards? There absolutely were. Could the troops whip one out when being verbally assaulted and it would all end? Fuck no. There has not been one single confirmed first hand eyewitness report. Never. More like Reo Speedwagon’s “Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, who heard it from another” you been really stressed owwwwwut. And if you sang along with that, you’re an old motherfucker. We all heard it from someone-A who knew someone-B who gave a first hand account. And that someone trusted that someone who gave the first hand account. In other words they trusted a fart. Never trust a fart. You will eventually shit your pants.

What really happened was someone-B heard it from someone-C who gave the first hand account, and someone-B trusted someone-C, so when someone-B passes along this knowledge, he tweaks the story just a hair. Someone-B relays the story as if they were the actual first hand account. Because they know a truth seeking someone-A will not just accept a word of mouth story as the gods’ honest truth unless they hear it from that certain point of view.

So what were these stress cards? Just that. Stress cards came in various shapes and sizes. The most common ones I have touched came in the size of a credit card and a 6-inch ruler. Most were given out by agencies that fell within the realm of Army Community Services. These agencies go to cheap promotional stores where they get pens, pencils, stress balls, and yes, stress cards engraved or pictured with their individual logo and numbers. It’s their business cards.

The Army has long struggled with suicide. Of course depression/stress played a large part in the root cause of these suicides. These cards would list agencies and phone numbers one could call if one were to be feeling depressed or stressed. Most of these cards even contained a strip of material that when you place your thumb on them for 30 seconds, it would change color. You then matched the resulting color to a scale off to the side to determine your stress level. Sound like a mood ring? Same concept. I’ve been on the receiving end of these cards during various briefings throughout my career in government service and I’ve handed them out to members of my various briefings.

So yes. Stress cards existed. No, they were never pulled out to stop a Drill from berating you.

According to this news article, someone was questioning the validity of someone else’s veteran status and asked for some ID. A knife was pulled, followed by an air gun, which ultimately led to someone being shot in the chest.

Reminds me of an old war-story. All Veterans have some good war-stories. Here’s one of mine.

It was around Y2K timeframe. I know that because that’s when I did a year in Korea. I was so sure that nothing would go wrong with that whole situation that I booked my return flight back to Korea just as it turned midnight, December 31, 1999. I was correct. Nothing bad happened. Also, it is the setting of this story.

I won’t mention this person by name to protect the guilty. We’ll just refer to him as OP-4.

OP-4 had a tendency to pull his nuts out. You know how guys are in the locker room. Someone tells someone to suck something. Somebody then tells the other someone to go ahead and pull them and he will. That’s where most locker room banter would end. Not with OP-4. He would pull them out. In front of everybody. Someone was then left with the choice to, uh, shit or get off the pot, so to speak.

The world was OP-4’s locker room. He called his nuts, his “plums.” Group picture? Zoom in on OP-4. Plums. Hanging outside his pants.

One time we were in a club on Kunsan Air Base, seated around a table ordering drinks. Some Air Force guy asked to see OP-4’s ID. So OP-4 pulled out one his plums and proceeded to call it his “ID.” If memory serves (it has been over 25 years since) he also asked if he needed a second ID as well. He did not need a secondary ID. Thank fuck for that.

“Oh man! That’s fucked up!” Exclaimed the Air Force guy, “This is my wife!” He was pointing to the female at his side. OP-4 was never asked to show his ID again. That I’m aware of.