By popular demand!
I actually have some funny stories from work lately, but you all have been totally like dissing me on my work biz, so I'm not gonna tell them.
Well. Not today, anyway.
Instead, I shall tell you one of my Humorous Anecdotes. From the army. I know. I don't care. *I* think it was funny, and I don't really care if you had to be there to see how funny it was, so there.
So.
Here it is.
My army story.
Now if you're still reading after all those line breaks, you only have yourself to blame.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was in the army. I was, for reasons unknown, chosen to be a sergeant for the engineers. People who know me would find that an idea of limited merit. Engineers build bridges, which involves lifting ridiculously heavy things without the appropriately heavy machinery. Being a sergeant involves screaming abuse at people until they do whatever you tell them. I'm more of a comfy-chair type, and if I want people to do what I tell them, I'm more inclined to explain my standpoint until they either agree with me or just do as I say in the hope that it will make me shut up. But I digress.
I was in the army, and I was a sergeant, and our soldiers were having war games at night. A select group of elite officers (or, whoever they could round up that didn't have time to hide) was selected to launch a surprise attack. That would be me and 11 other furirer and sergeanter with limited motivation. We were given a bunch of blanks and told to sneak out quietly in a small truck and hide at Point X. (How cool is that, by the way? If you're going to be somewhere on a map, Point A and Point B are as dull as spoons. Point C is pretentious. Point D is too much, and don't even get me started on E-K. But Point X, you know that's where it's gonna happen.) So. The soldiers are all going to go attack Point A. After they're done, they're going to retreat along Road 1 to point B, where they will set up defenses and take on a counter attack from the group at point A. So they know what's going to happen. EXCEPT! Along Road 1 lies not only Point X, but also 12 junior officers with automatic assault rifles. It should be mentioned that this is Sweden in early March. It's pitch black outside, and we're wearing camoflage and everything. We're just about stinking invisible. I have 11 nutcases laying in a ditch across the road from me, trying hard not to giggle out loud, and I'm sitting in terrain vehicle on the other side of the road, with one hand on the starter and the other on the headlights, ready to blind the troops and scare the crap out of them by suddenly bounce out into the road. (Our camoflage method for the truck warrants mentioning on its own, I believe. We simply cut down two trees over the it. Again. Stinking invisible.)
Anyway. There we lay, breathlessly, freezing our butts off, waiting for something to happen. And soon enough, all hell breaks loose half a mile or so up in the woods. That would be the soldiers attacking Point A, of course. Ooh, excitement! That means they'll be coming here soon! *giggle* *bounce* *nudge* After a little while, the shooting stops, and we wait with baited breath. Not to mention baited trap. Well, trap, anyway. And we wait. And wait. Jätte-wait. Finally we see this light. It's just one light. And it's bobbing. It takes us a while to figure out what's going on, but finally we realize that it's the soldiers, running STRAIGHT AT US, with a FLASHLIGHT. At this point it's REALLY hard not to burst out laughing. We can see them from a MILE away! Of course, we can't see if it's just one platoon or the whole bunch, since all we can see is that light, but who cares? We wait. We wait. We wait until they're 30 feet from us. Then I turn on the full beam on the truck and push the starter, making the truck jump out onto the road, right in their faces, giving a pretty good impression of being about to run them over. At the same time, 11 others open up with fully automatic AK4 fire from the ditch, not ten feet from the soldiers. The noise is indescribable. Of course, in the blinding light, we can't see a thing, but we don't really need to.
Some 240 rounds later, our eyes begin to adjust to the light. And that's when we realize that we haven't so much slaughtered the soldiers as we have mowed down a group of joggers from the UN batallion training at our compound. They're now standing in the middle of the road, looking very much like they're having heart attacks. We all jump out into the road and yell at each other for about 10 seconds, before deciding to just make a suicide attack agains point B. We disappear quickly in various directions, depending on where we think Point B might be located.
The one thing about this that still makes me laugh when I think about it is that we never said a single word to the UN soldiers. We scared the living crap out of them, and then just disappeared without a word, leaving them there with soiled pants and clutching at their hearts. And if they haven't stopped, they're standing there still.
Well. Not today, anyway.
Instead, I shall tell you one of my Humorous Anecdotes. From the army. I know. I don't care. *I* think it was funny, and I don't really care if you had to be there to see how funny it was, so there.
So.
Here it is.
My army story.
Now if you're still reading after all those line breaks, you only have yourself to blame.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was in the army. I was, for reasons unknown, chosen to be a sergeant for the engineers. People who know me would find that an idea of limited merit. Engineers build bridges, which involves lifting ridiculously heavy things without the appropriately heavy machinery. Being a sergeant involves screaming abuse at people until they do whatever you tell them. I'm more of a comfy-chair type, and if I want people to do what I tell them, I'm more inclined to explain my standpoint until they either agree with me or just do as I say in the hope that it will make me shut up. But I digress.
I was in the army, and I was a sergeant, and our soldiers were having war games at night. A select group of elite officers (or, whoever they could round up that didn't have time to hide) was selected to launch a surprise attack. That would be me and 11 other furirer and sergeanter with limited motivation. We were given a bunch of blanks and told to sneak out quietly in a small truck and hide at Point X. (How cool is that, by the way? If you're going to be somewhere on a map, Point A and Point B are as dull as spoons. Point C is pretentious. Point D is too much, and don't even get me started on E-K. But Point X, you know that's where it's gonna happen.) So. The soldiers are all going to go attack Point A. After they're done, they're going to retreat along Road 1 to point B, where they will set up defenses and take on a counter attack from the group at point A. So they know what's going to happen. EXCEPT! Along Road 1 lies not only Point X, but also 12 junior officers with automatic assault rifles. It should be mentioned that this is Sweden in early March. It's pitch black outside, and we're wearing camoflage and everything. We're just about stinking invisible. I have 11 nutcases laying in a ditch across the road from me, trying hard not to giggle out loud, and I'm sitting in terrain vehicle on the other side of the road, with one hand on the starter and the other on the headlights, ready to blind the troops and scare the crap out of them by suddenly bounce out into the road. (Our camoflage method for the truck warrants mentioning on its own, I believe. We simply cut down two trees over the it. Again. Stinking invisible.)
Anyway. There we lay, breathlessly, freezing our butts off, waiting for something to happen. And soon enough, all hell breaks loose half a mile or so up in the woods. That would be the soldiers attacking Point A, of course. Ooh, excitement! That means they'll be coming here soon! *giggle* *bounce* *nudge* After a little while, the shooting stops, and we wait with baited breath. Not to mention baited trap. Well, trap, anyway. And we wait. And wait. Jätte-wait. Finally we see this light. It's just one light. And it's bobbing. It takes us a while to figure out what's going on, but finally we realize that it's the soldiers, running STRAIGHT AT US, with a FLASHLIGHT. At this point it's REALLY hard not to burst out laughing. We can see them from a MILE away! Of course, we can't see if it's just one platoon or the whole bunch, since all we can see is that light, but who cares? We wait. We wait. We wait until they're 30 feet from us. Then I turn on the full beam on the truck and push the starter, making the truck jump out onto the road, right in their faces, giving a pretty good impression of being about to run them over. At the same time, 11 others open up with fully automatic AK4 fire from the ditch, not ten feet from the soldiers. The noise is indescribable. Of course, in the blinding light, we can't see a thing, but we don't really need to.
Some 240 rounds later, our eyes begin to adjust to the light. And that's when we realize that we haven't so much slaughtered the soldiers as we have mowed down a group of joggers from the UN batallion training at our compound. They're now standing in the middle of the road, looking very much like they're having heart attacks. We all jump out into the road and yell at each other for about 10 seconds, before deciding to just make a suicide attack agains point B. We disappear quickly in various directions, depending on where we think Point B might be located.
The one thing about this that still makes me laugh when I think about it is that we never said a single word to the UN soldiers. We scared the living crap out of them, and then just disappeared without a word, leaving them there with soiled pants and clutching at their hearts. And if they haven't stopped, they're standing there still.