HOW TO PREPARE FOR A DEPLOYMENT TO AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, ETC.

Sent by a Jewish friend who is currently on active duty in the US military.

The following humorous piece was floating around. I was rolling on the floor laughing when I read this, as did many I work or have worked with. I had to censor one or two entries out, but the effect is still great. I have not experienced every one of the points, below. You may not understand all of the references so if you have any nagging questions, just ask.

Once you find out you’re deploying, take the following actions to simulate your upcoming lifestyle in order to ensure a smooth transition and avoid shock as you acclimate to your new accommodations and routine:

1. Sleep in a sleeping bag on a cot in the garage.
2. Replace the garage door with a curtain made from your rain poncho.
3. 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.
4. Beginning two hours after you fall asleep and continuing every hour thereafter until it’s time for you to get up, have your wife whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your face and mumble, “sorry, wrong cot”. For best effect, place assorted debris around you so that you’re first awoken by the sound of items being kicked and knocked over prior to the flashlight being shone in your eyes.
5. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
6. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.
7. 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.
8. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
9. Sprinkle a layer of fine dust over every item and surface in your house being sure to include the interior of electronics such as cassette players and radios. Then try to clean the dust off every few days. Immediately re-sprinkle another layer of fine dust over everything.
10. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on “high” for that tactical generator smell.
11. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.
12. 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 at you.
13. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage on one side of your bathtub.
14. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
15. 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 that no one voted for.
16. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator to see what you have in stock. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.
17. Adjust your clocks so that it becomes normal to eat breakfast beginning at 0130 (1:30 a.m.), lunch at 0730 (7:30 a.m.), and dinner at 1200 (12:00 p.m.). It should also be normal for sunrise to be just after midnight and sunset before 1400 (2:00 p.m.).
18. Renovate your bathroom. Remove the toilet and use an outhouse/porta-john instead. Hang a green plastic sheet down the middle of your bathtub and remove the showerhead. Replace it with a PVC pipe installed at chest height. Bore small holes in the PVC pipe so that the “shower” is actually a fine mist sprayed in any and every direction. Keep two inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Disconnect the hot water pipe.
19. Wake up in the middle of the night and grab four of your friends to take a shower with you since the water won’t be turned on for fewer than five individuals. Wake your friends and move out as fast as you can to simulate the erroneous expectation that there might be warm water left at this time of night. Stand in two inches of soapy cold water under the chest-high PVC pipe as described above. “Shower” in the fine icy cold mist sprayed in every direction. Just before you succumb to hypothermia, pretend that you feel clean and refreshed.
20. In the outhouse you set up leave 2-3 sheets of toilet paper. For best effect, remove the paper altogether. Clean outhouse once a week.
21. Keep a roll of toilet paper near your cot and bring it to the porta-john with you. And bring your M9 pistol, M4 carbine, or M16 rifle and a flashlight.
22. Once a month, take each major appliance completely apart and then put it back together again.
23. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5-6 hours before drinking. Be sure to only use powdered creamer that has bound itself into cement-like chunks.
24. Every 2-3 weeks announce to your family that they have mail. Have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after dinner and then say, “Sorry, it’s for the other Smith”.
25. Wash only 13 items of laundry per week, counting each pair of socks as two items. Use the cheapest and most insoluble granular laundry detergent available. Roll up the semi-wet “clean” clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage. After a week, unroll the clothes and without ironing or removing the mildew proudly wear the clothes to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don’t know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
26. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find. Go heavily armed while wearing a ballistic armor vest and a Kevlar helmet. If possible, obtain Humvees with 50-caliber machine guns mounted atop. Take friends along to man the machine guns. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Using an interpreter to translate your words, announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
27. When they stare blankly at you because they don’t understand who you are or why you care to help them just repeat that you are there to help them.
28. Have a friend play the role of a local resident who speaks English. Have him shout the questions “Why did you wait until now?” and “Why wasn’t America interested in helping us for the past thirty years?”. Pretend you don’t hear the questions and ignore him.
29. Have your teenage son play the role of a local warlord. Rent land from this warlord. Use US Government money to pay prime Manhattan real estate rent even though the property he’s letting you use is worth no more than $20.
30. Have friends play the role of village elders. Meet these village elders and give them money. Tell the village elders that they money you’re providing is so that they can buy much-needed supplies for the village and repair the school. Then revisit the “village” in three months and pretend to not notice the shiny, new watches the elders are now wearing. Further pretend that you don’t notice that the school hasn’t changed nor a single additional supply bought.
31. Eat a single Sweet Tart every Monday and convince yourself that it’s so you won’t contract Malaria. Simulate ignoring the fact that you’re months away from the rainy season and haven’t seen standing water or mosquitoes since your arrival.
32. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter after having her role-play that she was just able to obtain a DSN line back to the States after attempting to get one for 6 days straight.
33. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.
34. Prior to each car trip, put on your ballistic armor vest and Kevlar helmet. Have a loaded weapon by your side. Calmly tell your wife who’s in the front passenger seat that if you’re shot she should grab the wheel and continue driving the car for 300 meters before stopping to ensure the car doesn’t stop while still in the kill zone.
35. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect it for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
36. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 0300 (3:00 a.m.). When started neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.
37. Drink your beverages warm.
38. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come inside.
39. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the back yard. Complain that the 4 x 4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.
40. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-gator.
41. 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. Have the form sit on your desk for a week before submitting the paperwork to your spouse for processing. Tell your 5-year old the paperwork’s lost and redo the paperwork. Resubmit it to your spouse. After another two weeks, give your son the gum.
42. 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 backyard.
43. Just when you think you’re ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another 6 months to simulate the next deployment you’ve just been ordered to support.

- posted by Izak @ 11:26 PM