40 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR A MILITARY DEPLOYMENT

[lynn jones]

40 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR A MILITARY DEPLOYMENT

Unfortunately these kinds of things only get circulated to other Army people

because no one else would understand them or appreciate the gallows humor.

It's really the other 99.9% of the American public that would benefit from

reading and understanding these messages. Have a great day...and God Bless

all American servicemen and women!

How to Prepare for a Deployment:

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Two hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open

the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong

cot.".

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle

of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four

inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee

everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet

paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic

deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's.

Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and

dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for

that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your

family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper

noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the

wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him

when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in

the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly

sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your

food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an

unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it

goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate

there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the

garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it

back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six

hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their

strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange

clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and

lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back

doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the

sill every time you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the

bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in

case"...every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as

you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry,

it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean

clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage

where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or

removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family

gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like.

Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed,

wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a

vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale

phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and

fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and

culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before

proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m.

When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just

registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute

for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you

placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the

backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them

rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact

stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type

up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to

your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot

it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your

family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can

perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them

you are doing this so they won't get cold/hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself

to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next

deployment you've been ordered to support.

[AikiDale]

and to think they volunteered....

[Steve Anderson]

Meant to be funny, but 40 more reasons why I am in awe of those whose serve.

I feel so guilty not being in.

SA

[Gun Geek]

I feel so guilty not being in

.

Me too.

When I was of age to do something like join the Military, it was seen as a not so smart move by most of the people who gave such advice. This was the mid - late 80's. There were lots of problems with the Military then - drugs were rampant, and the we still had the Vietnam hangover. I didn't join and I regret it now. Now I'm 38 and they don't want my old body.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a death wish, I'm not itching to be a Cowboy dodging bullets, or running around on a power trip, but I do feel that same guilt because I'm not there contributing.

God bless those that are. Do what you can here at home to make things a little better for them and their families.

[dirtypool40]

makes me think about this.

What did you do today for Freedom?

[JFD]

I've "been there and done that" many times.

The difference is that it's been so long ago that all I have left are fond memories.

I tend to forget how HARD it was simply to live, much less do the job.

[Airedale]

Lynn,

You must have been in the fancy Army. When I got ready for a deployment, it all went into a ruck and I carried it.

If you really want to prep don't bathe for 2 weeks, get a really good rash going in all the "friction" areas, keep that one spare, clean, dry pair of socks in your helmet (and never put them on), remember that ,in the dry season (jungle deployments), there's not enough water to brush your teeth, this could go on for pages, I'll stop this bad punctuation now.

Ah...the memories,

Dave