This is my chicken
I don't know why, but I was surprised by the reactions that I got from my rifle / macbook joke. I decided that it's a amalgam of too many personal inside jokes presented to the wrong audience so nobody really thinks it was funny except me. That makes me look pretty pathetic and it's probably more than just appearances. I think I actually offended some people. It was an interesting social experiment in a way. Of the few people who even took the time to notice me, a few seemed to kind of get it but in an "eh..." kind of way.
Soldiers aren't all stupid but they all end up with loads of time on their hands periodically. It's traditional, it's institutional, It's called "hurry up and wait". That's where I learned so many marvelous nasty limericks! What's noteworthy though is that soldiers develop a sense of humor that's unique to soldiers. It's mostly in the vein of a kind of cautious, smug, cynical, sarcasm that makes supplication almost worth it. If you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about. Over the years, I heard many a soldier proclaim, "This is my ______ there are many like it but this one is mine". It could be anything from an STD to a ball point pen. But I remember at some point that chickens got to be pretty important. The chicken began as a metaphor for any task during a speech that was given by our First Sergeant one day. It was basically his way of saying that he didn't believe in micro-management. He said something like, "If I give you a chicken to cook, it's your chicken to cook. You can bake it, boil it, or fry it, but I'm counting on you to cook it."
I didn't start it, but it spread like wildfire. The more miserable, lengthy, or mundane the task, the more likely it was to hear soldiers in my company chant, "This is my chicken. There are many like it but this one is mine..."
One day some good-natured busybody was giving his advice about how he thought some surely mundane task should be handled. He was new and hadn't realized that he was butting in and that the sergeant in charge of this particular task was known for being fairly crotchety. I had never heard the crotchety sergeant do the "This is my chicken..." chant before, but on this day he got fed up and got in SGT Busybody's face and yelled, "I'm fucking this chicken!!". After that, all sorts of versions of the Adam Sandler song began to surface and "chicken" started to become a catch-all word for anything that was confusing, messed up, or for which one couldn't remember the real name.
Those were the days...
Well, not really.
Tune in next time to hear all about Sheep.
Soldiers aren't all stupid but they all end up with loads of time on their hands periodically. It's traditional, it's institutional, It's called "hurry up and wait". That's where I learned so many marvelous nasty limericks! What's noteworthy though is that soldiers develop a sense of humor that's unique to soldiers. It's mostly in the vein of a kind of cautious, smug, cynical, sarcasm that makes supplication almost worth it. If you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about. Over the years, I heard many a soldier proclaim, "This is my ______ there are many like it but this one is mine". It could be anything from an STD to a ball point pen. But I remember at some point that chickens got to be pretty important. The chicken began as a metaphor for any task during a speech that was given by our First Sergeant one day. It was basically his way of saying that he didn't believe in micro-management. He said something like, "If I give you a chicken to cook, it's your chicken to cook. You can bake it, boil it, or fry it, but I'm counting on you to cook it."
I didn't start it, but it spread like wildfire. The more miserable, lengthy, or mundane the task, the more likely it was to hear soldiers in my company chant, "This is my chicken. There are many like it but this one is mine..."
One day some good-natured busybody was giving his advice about how he thought some surely mundane task should be handled. He was new and hadn't realized that he was butting in and that the sergeant in charge of this particular task was known for being fairly crotchety. I had never heard the crotchety sergeant do the "This is my chicken..." chant before, but on this day he got fed up and got in SGT Busybody's face and yelled, "I'm fucking this chicken!!". After that, all sorts of versions of the Adam Sandler song began to surface and "chicken" started to become a catch-all word for anything that was confusing, messed up, or for which one couldn't remember the real name.
Those were the days...
Well, not really.
Tune in next time to hear all about Sheep.