There Will Be Blood...

I remember playing Foosball in College Park 36. The 'Goats were all there. I recall very clearly that when you played on the side nearest the doorway you put your beer on the corner of the table against the wall. And I remember that I was also so paranoid that when the table shook my beer would fall. Why spilling my beer worried me so much I will never know. I mean I puked on the keg my first time in 36, so a spilled beer wouldn't have been a huge embarrassment.

I remember running around the deck at CH with a wet umbrella poll during a thunderstorm. I was temping fate in the most outrageous, boisterous way. Lighting is, after all, pure energy. It makes no choices, it follows the natural laws that say it will ground itself wherever convenient. Nature wouldn't have minded that the most convenient place was my body holding a 4 foot metal rod. And at the time I wouldn't have either. I wasn't suicidal, I just felt the need to shove Fate a little. To show myself and the universe that I was not the kind of guy who could be pushed around.

Sometimes I just like to write things I remember. I'm afraid I'll forget them. I'm not super-macho or anything but I am not afraid of much. But I am terrified of forgetting the experiences that have made me who I am. Everything I have ever done is part of me and I do not want to take for granted or forget those experiences.

Word on the street lately is when my Brigade goes over in the fall we will be replacing 3 brigades. If you don't understand that I'll make it simple. 3,500 troops (my brigade) will be responsible for the real estate that 11,000 troops (the 3 brigades we are replacing) used to hold. We're gonna be spread thin and despite what CNN and the newspaper says Iraq is not a done deal. The President's withdraw plan has as much chance of succeeding as the ill-fated three-some I was nearly a part of. (That I do not want to talk about.) I hope I'm wrong, but odds are we're going to get ate the fuck up. And I'd hate all my wonderful memories to die with me.