Tuesday, June 9, 2009

ARMY ADVENTURES - Fort Ord #1

A million years ago, when I was a teenager, I injured my knee playing a pickup game of football. The injury, I was told, was to the cartiledge of the right knee. Now that injury played quite a role while I was in the service. No, not the Spanish-American War!

I was drafted into the army on March 2, 1951, and that was during the Korean conflict. Couldn’t be called “war” because war had not been declared.

I was assigned to a six weeks’ basic training cycle, and just about half way through, we were on a drill where we were prone on the ground, had to jump up, leap over a fairly wide ditch, and hit the dirt on the other side. Well, I hit, all right. Landed on my right leg, the cartiledge popped, and down I went. As was usual when my knee went out, it swelled up like a grapefruit, and I could scarcely walk. I knew it would take about a week for the swelling to go down, so I was hauled off to the base hospital.

I was furious! I figured I was going to have to start basic training all over again, and that did not appeal to me at all!

The army doctors took me into an examination room to see what they could figure out. I kept saying it was a cartiledge injury, but they had to prove it to themselves. “Do you want us to operate on that”, I was asked. “No, thank you,” I replied grumpily. So they sent me back to the ward where I continued to simmer.

A day or two later, with yours truly still sending smoke out of my ears, the ward doors opened, and a couple of GI’s pushed in a piano. “Oh, no,” I groaned to myself, “now some idiot is going to try to (ugh) entertain us with lousy piano banging”. And in came some fellow who sat down at the piano, and behind him came ... I am not making this up ... Danny Kaye! He had performed the night before at the Soldier’s Club, and now was making the rounds at the hospital to try to cheer up us poor guys.

He went around to every bed, and said something to each GI. I have no recollection what he said to me, but I was most astonished. Then he went over by the piano, did a couple of numbers, and then left for the next ward.

Well, the effect on me was transforming! About a week or 10 days after the swelling went down, I was assigned to a new basic company, and I started all over again. But that’s not the end of the saga of my bum knee. More another time.


Humor:
Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed
itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity, such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6. I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background
while attempting to run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please help!

Thanks, A Troubled User.

Reply:
Dear Troubled User:

This is a very common complaint.

Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it isjust a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once Installed!

You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife1.0 and work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background application "Yes Dear".

The best course of action is to enter the command APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2.

However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0 !

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.

Best of luck,
Tech Support

2 comments:

  1. Great story! How nice of Danny Kaye to cheer you up!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow. Cool. And I'm quite sure Fort Ord is where my dad did his basic training for WWII.

    My older son snapped his ACL ligament in his knee and had to have a cadaver replacement a few years ago, so I'm wincing for you on that one.

    ReplyDelete