21 September 2009

My Life In The Sandbox, Part 1


Recently, I was asked (by someone whose writing I much admire) to provide more insight into being a combat veteran with tits. I have some pieces I wrote many moons ago, while on my second tour. Some are funny, and some are sad. If you're up for it, read on.


I have a tower.


It’s a relatively small tower, as towers go. It’s concrete, and the inside is small. I can’t tell you much about this tower, because that would be a violation of the rules that the PTB’s (Powers That Be) have set forth. And that would be bad. So instead, I’m going to tell you what’s outside my tower.


I have this window, see. And this window overlooks some of the ugliest friggin’ country I’ve ever looked at. Seriously. It’s gross. I look at it, and it literally makes me wonder why the hell anyone would stop long enough to set up camp there, let alone build cities. Anywho, my friend Serrano and I are “in the business of observing the perimeter”, as the brief tells us. Well, I guess that the briefer really tells us, because the brief can’t speak due to the fact that it’s a piece of paper.
But I digress.
We watch these shepherds. And yes, they are shepherds, not “sheepherders”, or “the sheep herding guys”, as my shift mates so lovingly refer to them. There are three of them. A father and a son, who have either a rather large flock, or more than one flock. I don’t know what the measure of a flock is, so I can’t rightly say. They are cool. They don’t come too near the wire, and they don’t do anything shady. They just run around and play what looks like tag, and then they take their sheep in. Sometimes they skip. It’s cool. Then there’s the other guy. I’m not sure what his issue is, but when he comes out, the father that tends the other flock guides his son away. The first day I saw him, he was walking around the field with his pants around his ankles. Ew. And as if that weren’t enough, I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, so I found him with my binos. And if you’re a little ahead of the game, you can probably imagine what I’m going to tell you next.
That’s right. No underwear. Nada chonies. Bare assed, in HDB (That’s hi def binoculars).
His pants were too big, so he walked around with them around his ankles. So not only is this dude making me throw up a little in my mouth, he’s getting a little too close to my concertina. I am not down with Ahmed (which is what I call him) getting that close to my little sandbox haven. So we decide that we need to let him know what he’s doing wrong. Of course, I get to be the one who yells out of the window of the tower, and wave him back. To which he promptly waves hello back. Unfortunately, he happened to wave with the hand that was holding up the pants. That’s the kind of full frontal that will make a girl yearn for Brad Pitt, with or without Angelina. Because it was singularly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. Today he figured it out, and when I yelled, he moved his sheep away.
And his pants stayed up.

1 comment:

injaynesworld said...

I can't even imagine having the guts to do what you did. Thank you for your service. Hugs...

P.S. Thanks for your comment on my blog post today. Very funny!