Wednesday, January 26, 2005

My Life in Porn

This isn't really about porn, but I'm not afraid to whore myself out to attract a reader. There are bajillions of milblogs out there, and god knows I don't want to be confused for one of those, but it's been long enough since I got out that I mostly remember the funny stuff.

Like this one time we went to the field, it was the first time for a cherry private in my squad, the guy was from New York City and had never been out in the woods before he joined the army. Chiggers were pretty common in Georgia, although thank God I was never afflicted, but it was common enough that some guys would carry this goop called Chig-a-way. During our time out this kid had developed some sort of jock itch but was embarrassed and didn't let anyone know, instead he smeared a liberal handful of Chig-a-way on his scrotum while nobody was looking. I guess his logic was that chiggers caused itching, and his balls itched, therefore he must have chiggers... on his sack.

Needless to say the Chig-a-way did not help, so he finally told me his shit was scratchy and I sent him to see the Doc, who fished through his medic's pack and came up with a bottle of Calamine lotion. Off Mr. Cherry Private goes into the bushes and smears a liberal handful calamine lotion on top of the Chig-a-way, creating a soupy mess in his shorts.

I should back up a bit... by this time we had finished running our missions, and were gearing up for a fifteen mile foot movement to our extraction point. It was hot as hell and humid to boot, Georgia in July and all that happy shit, so we were taking it easy until sundown and were going to hump it out that night. We were in admin mode, meaning we were not acting as though we were in a combat environment. Sort of a war time out.

Back to soupy nuts. He's now got this total mess in his drawers and is desperately thinking about what to do with the wet, lotion-like mess in his pants, and his genius brain comes up with baby powder. Baby powder absorbs moisture, right? Right. But he didn't have baby powder. He did have foot powder.

I don't know if there was an actual chemical reaction occurring or if the combination was just wrong when in contact with human skin, but I'm kicking back on my ruck watching this dufus standing in the middle of a small clearing, pants down around his ankles, shaking his fists at the sky and screaming "MY...NUTS...ARE...ON...FIRE!"