so I'm thinking about the incident described,looked at the pics of the "rick's thumb biter"......
...and it comes to me only an idiot would get his hand caught between the receicer and the top of the grip area and I have to wonder just what in the hell I was doing with my right thumb sticking straight up in the air !
style points ? More like not paying attention to where ALL my various appendages happened to be sticking out and like with most such oversights if it is sticking out someone or something is going to nip at it as a reminder to tuck that fker back in where it belongs or lose it
Story 2 :
Doing a squad level live fire fire and manuvuer excercise on a bunker at the top of a very steep hill that was firing 7.62 rounds down at our ass from an M-60 and because I am the rifle squad leader it is my job to make sure Alpha fire Team does not shoot the shit out of Bravo fire team while manuevering my squad forward and that they do not cross the bunkers assigned field of fire (one stupid mistake,a moment of inattention and your guy crosses the field of fire ? not good).
Using a combination of hand signals,shouts and my "Mickey Mouse" squad radio,a radio that only RICKMONSTER has the transceiver of while the other knuckleheads just a helmet clip on receiver with no send ability (means i can say whatever I want and not get any backtalk
) I'm moving the fire teams steadily up the hill throwing a serious amount of 5.56 ball ammo down range and my M-16 goes to "bolt locked open" : EMPTY ! SHIT !
So I have my rifle tucked under my arm pit,I'm fumbling for a new mag in an attempt to reload having already gone through the "back toback" twenties which I droped right there ,moving up the hill at a pretty good clip,head on a damn swivel,its load and dust is kicking up everywhere and all the while I'm keeping track of my flock so everyone comes out of this healthy and my fkn Rifle slips and is headed to the ground barrel first so what does rick do ?
Drops the magazine he was about to pop in and grabs the rifle before it hits and plugs the barrel is what but because it happened so fast and because i was looking left/right/forward/up I grabbed the freakin' BARREL !
Forty G-damn rounds down range makes for one HOT Mutha Effing rifle barrel and as soon as i grabbed it I KNEW i had made a boo boo and that it was not a simple "put a band aid on it" situation but being that it was at the end stages of the excercise and being that it was MY JOB to have the gunner in the bunker shift fire when my guy was in postion to frag the bunker there was zero time for anything other than "do the job jerkweed then worry about you"
So we complete the course and it being Tigerland/Ft.Polk,La. our standard battle dress uniform (BDU) consisted of two canteens of water to avoid dehydration I proceeded to IMMEDIATELY douse my now
screaming with every heart beat/puffed up like a GD male turkey during the mating dance swollen hand with both canteens then asked for a couple more from my crew and doused again then wrapped it up in my bandana I always wore under my steel pot hoping it was not as bad as i beleived it was KNOWING that burns are nothing to play with and that if bad enough can lead to permanat damage.
I get to the bottom and some puke rat bastard baby fk went running to my platoon sarge and told the tale at which time being busted I had no choice but to seek aid (right there during live fire excercises).
When i wrapped it minutes before it was just all red and puffy across the entire palm but when i UN wrapped it the bitch was NASTY !
I could actually see the imprint from the barrel of my rifle where it burned GROOVES across my palm and fingers (when I closed my hand
) and the skin had turned yellow and was actually hardening !
MINUTES ! not hours or days but minutes !
So the medic looks at this and i say "ain't nothing man,Doused it with my canteens and it was fines" to which he went on this long tirade/medical "this is what can happen with a burn like that" speel that I was in no mood to give a shit about so just background noise on my personal sound track but I do remember him saying I probably avoided a more serious situation by immediately dousing the burn with the water then covering it to keep shit from sticking to the wound (I guess infections are a problem in a burn situation) so i "yeah yeah yeah'ed" him trying to break away because it was now time for the REAL fun to commence and i was having no part of missing it !
That "fun" was my platoon sargent having a duffle bag full of all manner of foreign assualt rifles that he had promised i could get a whack at and i was damn sure looking forward to it !
First up was an AK he smuggled back from indian country and I was ITCHIN' to throw some 7.62 shorts at a solid object never at that point having fired the WARSAW PACTs weapon of choice so here I am with a wounded paw,got some friggin burn ointment on it and a pretty dressing all nice and tidy,he throws the weapon to me and ......
SHIT ! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT !
I can't close my right hand ! The damn skin had like shrunk causing my hand to resemble a claw and not only could i not open and close the bitch but I had no feeling in it as well !
I am ready,the rifle is loaded,my buddy is watching with a smile looking for that evil grin i used to get when i was allowed unfettered acess to weapons of war with no rules other than don't shoot anyone or yopurself by accident,and I CAN'T FKN PULL THE TRIGGER !!!!
ARRRRRGH !
With my '16 I was equally proficient shooting either left or right handed with the only problem being the hot brass would go down my neck after ejecting the side port (design flaw in the M-16
) but I couldn't get it right with an unfamilair weapon from the wrong side so i figure "screw accuracy,I'll toss a few rounds from the hip,just walk them in to the target then have at it" but NOPE !
Can't hold the GD forestock either or get my hand in the sling loop so NO WAY to keep the barrel down !
Fkn day was a total waste and one that still pisses me off 'cause not only did i NOT get to go through the bag of toys but I ended up on restricted duty bored out of my skull in the rear area while my guys where out in the field and it was KILLING me !
Only so many times you can read the 11B20 Infantry Manual to see if you missed something,maybe a nice booby trap or field expedient bomb (now they call them IUDs I guess but we too knew how to blow shit up with not much raw material),maybe study the finer points of fire and manuever or crew served weapon placement or maybe studio the pick 7 radio or....
ended up getting blasted on hootch all day every day until i passed out just to still my mind so i could sleep ! REAL fkn useful i was
Finally i had to lie about my state of healing and suck up the pain while flxing my hand in front of the doc "look sir.Good as new ! Full feeling everything !" which he tested with the "pin" test and which not feeling shit i HAD to lie about
"yup.Felt that too"
Freaking hand was not 100% for
months and the scars I have still though they are faint and only noticeable if you know where to look and i do that day being one that stands out as one of those "Days that pissed you off to the wanna rip something apart and then eat it" point.
Days that I remember WAY better than any of the good days because those are the ones that bring the raw body wrenching emotion to the front that make every single part of your body tingle with fire ready to tear down trees barehanded due to the adrenelain and carotin flowing through the enlarged veins and when over is like you went on speed climb for all the energy expended that as the chemical levels subside and the oxygen delivery to the extremeties backs off (veins go back to normal size no longer needed for physical endurance while whatever pissed you off gets destroyed beyong recognition) you realise just how drained you are and just how much physical exertion is involved when the primal defense mechanisms kick in after the brain send the "something bad is about to happen" signal to the survival instinct receptors that has allowed the species to survive bad situations since we started walking upright and having sex face to face by going into "auto pilot" mode.
That is memorable while the good days ? You take pictures for those so you don't forget they mostly being too mellow/opiate like feeling,more fuzzy and dreamy than sparkly and sharply etched around the edges (tunnel vision.A physical response to anger/target for bad intent mode that causes humans to focus on the target while not seeing anything at the periphy and caused by the vessels at the temples putting pressure on the optic nerve...or something like that
)
Fuzzy is sleeping in flannel jammies with a teddy bear.Memorable is being mentally and physically amped up to a point where you think something may just break everything is so pumped up and/or tight and if you ask most who have lived at the edge of the cliffmost of their life they will tell you about every "near miss" life threatening or animal attack mode in their life but would be hard pressed to flesh out the details of even the most enjoyable days past which usually reverts to the wife it being her domain to not only remeber every little detail from the last twenty years but more than willing to remind you
just in case you forget....over and over and over and......
Gotta love 'em.We ARE built different and why it works as well as it does WHEN it does.
Put two alpha males together for ten years ? Five ? ONE ?
Not happening.someone would either have to leave or someone would have to dominate.Just the way it is and can't be avoided no matter how bad you would like to.
Woman being the polar opposite,the ying to the yang,the south pole to the male north pole creates balance and this being an audio electronics site (though rick does stray at times
) we ALL understand that without a reference point you have no juice so no ground,just a bare wire wire sitting there doing squat that while having the potential to be a live wire carrying voltage is just so much wasted copper for all the functionality it has,patently waiting for a ground wire to come by so it can DO something other than just BE there
This widely wandering commentary on pretty much nothing and from the very very the dark recesses of ricks not quite rational area of the brain is now ended
what was the question ?
) so while good for long shots at larger slow movers not the best for a fast flush and this was one so the shot dropped the bird but it was more of a cripple shot (wing) than a kill shot and guess where the little bastard landed ?
) it is COLD and the water not only colder but deep enough that if I have to go in my entire day will be ruined by the attitude I know I will have once my ass gets a soaking and the wind hits me.
) and the skin had turned yellow and was actually hardening !