Five Senses on a Maintenance Pad

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This piece was submitted to a veteran-oriented writing publication in 2018. It didn’t place.

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Friends and coworkers who went to Saudi Arabia before me always said, it’s not quite hell but you could see it from there.  I was of the opinion that if this wasn’t hell, it was a pretty good substitute.  I had to double up gloves just to be able to touch the dark green painted steel surfaces of the LOX (liquid oxygen) cart I was working on because of the heat of the Saudi spring.

A loud scream filled my ears as a fighter closed in over where the concrete maintenance pad was.  The smell of burning jet fuel filled my nose.  The smell and sound causing me to look up towards the north.

I looked up to see a standard air force grey F-16 flying in from the north with all of its mounted weapons and fuel tanks missing.  Every fighter that took off every day from Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB) was loaded for bear with weapons and loaded for a bear hunt with external tanks.  Sometimes they came back missing a few weapons, but this was the first time I’d seen one come back with the racks completely empty.

As the small grey jet flew over my location, the thrust of it’s engines kicked up the loose sand still mobile from the sand storm that sandblasted the base yesterday.  Nothing like the taste of desert sand mixed with jet fuel and parts of scorpions and camel spiders.

I ran over to where my radio was sitting on the control panel of a nearby LIN (liquid nitrogen) cart on the opposite end of the maintenance pad and picked it up just in time to hear the IFE (in flight emergency) call on the maintenance channel and the distant sirens of the fire trucks and ambulance headed towards the flightline.

Questions flew through my head, did Saddam finally decide to give us a fight?  Did we have enemy jets inbound?  What scared the pilot enough for him to drop or jettison everything on his weapon racks?

After the plane landed and the maintenance channel cleared the IFE, I had my initial answer.  The next immediate call was for fuel and ammo technicians to report to debrief.  After that, word got around the maintenance areas quickly. 

Somewhere in the desert between the Saudi and Iraq border were quite a few missiles and a fuel tank, lost after being jettisoned by a pilot who was way too new and panicked when he experienced his first SAM (surface-to-air missile) radar-lock.

Clipart stolen from Clipartmax.

Future Mascots for Professional Sports Teams

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This piece was submitted to a veteran-oriented writing publication in 2018. It didn’t place.

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After many years of debate and discussions about the offensive mascots for some professional sports teams, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL joined together in a joint press conference to announce an effort to eliminate any and all potentially offensive mascots.  The first move by each league immediately tagged Native American-themed teams for changes.

After that swift move, the leagues began internal discussions about how to not offend fan bases and discovered that many more teams required renaming. 

Because of objections rumored to come from Islamic communities, all mascots featuring crusaders, knights, and templars are now flagged for new names.  Additionally, victims of and the descendants of victims of vikings, pirates, and other barbaric tribes have expressed concerns about teams following those naming schemes, all of which are now identified for redesignation.

Allergy sufferers voice questions about bees, yellow jackets, and vegetation-based names causing the leagues to point at those for mascot changes as well.  PETA and other animal rights activists suggested that animal mascots were giving the public an unhealthy fear of those animals as well and those should be eliminated as well, which the leagues also agreed to out of fears of violence. 

Military themed names were found to be objectionable by peace activists and patriot labeled teams made convicted traitors Manning and Bergdahl nervous and require relabeling.

Colorblind activists found color-based mascots offensive to those who are unable to view the color spectrum.

Monsters, aliens, and mythological and cryptozoological creatures were deemed by pseudoscientists to be potentially offensive as well.  The alpha centaurians and sasquatch also voiced objections, so those names are right out.

Mascots based on state and regional names are also identified for relabeling initiatives due to objections voiced by residents of Colorado who insisted that the failures of teams from Denver should not be used to degrade the rest of Colorado residents.

In a joint statement at the end of their press conference, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL have announced that all professional sports teams shall be identified solely by the city in which they play in and the sport they participate.  For example, the St Louis Cardinals and St Louis Blues will now be identified as St Louis Baseball and St Louis Hockey, respectively. 

The leagues expect this new naming scheme to remain in place for a full two to six weeks or so before additional unexpected objections emerge and require the whole plan to be scrapped.

Clipart stolen from Clipartmax.

Pork on the Saudi Menu

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This piece was written for the local VA Creative Arts Festival in 2018. It took 2nd place in the “humorous poetry” category.

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Beef, chicken, pork again
Same menu in Saudi everyday
Isn’t pork forbidden by Islam
I’ve never seen a pig here anyway

Same menu in Saudi everyday
Maybe it’s camel or scorpion
I’ve never seen a pig here anyway
Haven’t seen cows or chickens

Maybe it’s camel or scorpion
Mike always gets the grilled cheese
Haven’t seen cows or chickens
Maybe Mike’s onto something

Mike always gets grilled cheese
Isn’t pork forbidden by Islam
Maybe Mike’s onto something
Beef, chicken, pork again

Clipart stolen from Clipartmax.

The Road West

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This piece was written for the local VA Creative Arts Festival in 2018. It took 3rd place in the “short short story” category.

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As the old man sat by the roadside near the pontoon bridge, he kept thinking, “I’ve been here before.  The times change, the players change, but the game itself is always the same.”

The approach of two soldiers interrupted his thoughts.  The woman had a silver leafy circle on the front of her armor.  The man’s armor bore a red cross, a red star of David, a red crescent, and the more familiar red five-pointed star.  Neither the woman nor the man looked Chinese or Asian.

“I’m sorry, sir.  But you must keep moving,” the woman said to him, in perfect mandarin.  The man immediately began to check his eyes, his breathing, his pulse.  She continued, “Chinese forces are holding for now, but evacuation of the rural areas is still necessary.”  Her voice hinted of urgency.

He glanced around again at the various soldiers.  The two in front of him were obviously U.S. troops.  He saw the differing camouflage patterns of Asian, African, European, and South American militaries among the rest of the soldiers.

He still remembered the sites of a few weeks ago.  His own village and many neighboring ones in flames.  Strange walking tanks attempting to herd villagers and destroying the permanent bridges.  That was nearly a month ago.

A few days after, the Chinese military pushed those invaders back towards the direction of the coastal cities.  A week after that, these other soldiers arrived with various trucks, construction teams, and instructions for the villagers to move towards the west.

Villagers packed the carts they owned.  The trucks were loaded with supplies the soldiers brought for the people, people who could not move under their own power, and things villagers absolutely insisted must come along.

The math in his head told him he’d traveled for fifteen days.  He was tired and unconvinced of the urgency.  A part of him suggested he just stop and accept the inevitable, another part of him suggested the worst was over.  No attacks took place since that night a month ago.

He looked up into the eyes of the American female and started to speak when a pair of aircraft flew overhead.  The blackish-grey machines wore no markings he recognized.  Both strafed the convoy, barely missing the bridge but hitting many of the mules, carts, trucks, soldiers, and villagers as they quickly flew past.

Then came the roaring engines of another pair of aircraft.  These both were pale grey.  One bearing U.S. markings and the other Russian as they screamed across the sky in pursuit of the attacking planes.

With wide eyes, he stood and spoke to the American female, “Now I understand the urgency.  What are we waiting for?”  Then he rejoined the line of villagers fleeing west.

Clipart stolen from Clipartmax.

The Hardest Part of the Twelve Steps

The 12 Steps is a reoccurring theme here for multiple reasons. But first among them is I believe in them and I live by them.

The hardest part of the 12 Steps is Steps 8 and 9:

  • 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Of course, with these two steps the difficulty begins the first time through the steps. Part of the difficulty is not so much Step 8, it’s easy to make the list of people you’ve wronged. Step 9 is difficult in and of itself. You have to swallow your pride and apologize for things you’ve done that hurt others.

Step 9 is further complicated by a couple of caveats in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: 1.) “There will be other cases where action ought to be deferred, and still others in which by the very nature of the situation we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.” and 2.) “While we may be quite willing to reveal the very worst, we must be sure to remember that we cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense of others.”

I mention this because part of the responsibility of a 12 stepper is a constant inventory and review. For me, it seems like every time I review through these two steps, someone who was on a previous Step 8 list and was unavailable for Step 9 contact suddenly becomes available for Step 9 contact.

And, once again, this happened recently.

Clipart stolen from Clipartmax.