The Friendly Ghost's Monkey With A Typewriter Experiment...

-Guest post from a fellow member of my platoon.

If you lock a hundred monkeys in a room with typewriters they will eventually bang out the works of Shakespeare, so by that logic if you lock one monkey in a tower with a pen and a notebook he should be able to write a guest post for his friends blog. So here goes.

I will start off this failed experiment of a guest post by telling you a little about me. Since MudPuppy likes to give everyone in this unit a fun pseudonym you can call me Friendly Ghost. I joined the military six years ago in high school and have been faithfully serving my country one weekend a month two weeks a year since then. I get to check the box labeled “some college: no degree” since I spent a few years a Western Illinois University. I have held several jobs in my life the top three are, Working at St. Charles Country club, A loss prevention officer at Kohl’s, and my favorite one Hot Dog Vendor at WIU. I love to procrastinate (just ask Mudpuppy how long he has been waiting for me to write a guest post for him). I love to read, mainly works of Fiction and Sci-Fi, but I will read the hippy tree hugging literary vomit which MudPuppy likes, because every now and then they bring up good ideas and have good points. I am also a self proclaimed nerd because I like well… nerd stuff. And yes I do enjoy sunsets and long walks on the beach. But that’s enough about me.

I figure I will start off this post with a rant about something at took place a couple of nights ago while on ECP, while guarding the FOB from non-existent attacks from the Taliban but mainly fighting off hypothermia. My team was doing one hour shifts, which means while one of us was defending the FOB, the other two were sleeping. However there is only one cot at ECP which means that while one person is sleeping on the cot, the other person can either sit on a chair or try to sleep on the floor for an hour then you switch out. It was about 3am or 0300 for you military types when it became my turn for the cot, and after an hour spent unsuccessfully trying to sleep on the floor I was looking to a little one on one time with the only piece of comfort in the entire ECP. So I get up ready to deposit myself on the cot and drift off to sleep, my team leader goes and sits down on the cot thusly dashing my hopes of lying down in comfort. Needless to say I am somewhat peeved so I ask him, “Can you sit on the chair?” Now keep in mind at 3am after lying on a cold floor for an hour I am about as friendly as a Bear who watched someone kick its cubs in the face, so it may have come out somewhat rude but it was still a reasonable request, however my team leader replies with “No.” So after I am able to digest this response I politely inform him that I would like him to “get off the fucking cot so I can lie down and go to sleep.” He then goes and tells me that I will be fine sitting for 5-10 minutes. I then chose at this time to bite my tongue and sit down on the cot, because as much as I sometimes do not like it I still somewhat respect the military rank structure. While I am sitting down on the cot when I should rightfully be laying down sleeping, I start to chuckle to myself over the entire situation, I chuckle because I know my team leader very well and if someone were to do that to him he would have pitch a fit and gone on and on till the person finally caved in a got off the couch, that or if it was a member of his team he would have sent them off to do some entirely pointless task so he could get the cot. So I’m sitting there when my team leader lets out this classic piece of verbal excrement, “If you would have asked nicely, I would have gotten up.” To which I planted a “Bullshit” flag on right away. This is because everyone has said that at one point in their lives or another and 99% of us know perfectly well that they would have never done it even if the person asked you sweetly enough to give you diabetes. And given how well I know my team leader I know that he is not in that 1% category. I mean I love the guy but as a team leader he cares way to much about himself and his own petty bullshit for me to respect him as a team leader anymore than I do, which I can say I do. I know the job is not an easy one but the team he has makes it easier for him then any of the other team leaders out there. I know that I may be somewhat biased when I describe the events which took place that night, but this is my post and I get to tell it how I see fit. So it goes.

Ranting about that just gave me a deeper respect for what MudPuppy does with this blog, it is a very safe and therapeutic place to bitch about what is going on which is a good thing and everyone needs to do it at least once in their life. So with that I give you Friendly Ghosts second rant of the post.

I have been in this company for six years. I know that our CO well, oks our CO sucks, and that the senior leaders do not always make sense on their decisions, but this is not a bad company. It is a good National Guard military police company. Do not get me wrong we are not perfect by any means, but we have learned to deal with things we cannot help and we did not bitch (as loudly or as much) as is going on now. Saying that most of the bitching started when we got inserts from other companies, at first we got inserts from other MP companies so there bitching was understandable and relevant. But some of their bitching was “this isn’t how we did it in my old company.” To which all I have to say is “that’s because this is not your old company, this is your new company.” Then we started getting inserts from other MOS’s who started to constantly bitch about why do we do this or why did we do that and of course there was always, “ this isn’t how we did it in the (insert other military occupation here).” We even have a soldier who likes to say “This is bullshit; this isn’t how we did it in Iraq.” I just want to say to all of them with bitches like that “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” We are a Military Police Unit, a peacekeeping, combat support branch of the military, which means we do things differently and have tactics which help us fulfill those roles. However what is most important is that you volunteered to come to this unit knowing full well that we are MP’s and a National Guard unit. We do things differently and you may not agree with it but unless you have a valid constructive comment to make during a meeting or when someone asks you something, just shut your freaking pie hole. This leads me to the senior leaders of my platoon to include the Team leaders of my squad, I say my squad because I do not know how the other squad’s team leaders deal with each other. I know that you all do not get along all of the time or for that sake like what each other has to say all the time, but you do not need to turn everything into a pissing contest. Oh My God. Someone said something you do not agree with or something you find ill advised. How about you bring up how you think it can be done in a respectful adult way, and if the person does not agree with you then you sit back and just follow the order, instead of turning it into yet another pointless pissing contest. Because in a pissing contest this big there will always be splash back and I only have so many clean uniforms. So it goes.

I have used So it goes a couple of times in this post for two reasons, One I just finished re reading Slaughterhouse Five and I really like that book, and Two, I suck at transitions when it comes to writing, I usually just email the paper to my sister and have her fix it (thanks Sis) That is usually the reason I do not write as much as I should or would like to. That and I hate looking at my hand writing and spelling. However I must say that I have found this to be an enjoyable experience and for those of you who make it through the minefield of misspelled words and grammar errors I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.

Thank you
Friendly Ghost
P.S.
Love you mom and dad

And I'll leave you with another picture that I put together, I hope you like it.