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The kids are getting old enough now that they are getting interested in watching things other than The Wiggles, Little Einsteins and Special Agent Oso. We've been watching more Discovery and National Geographic lately, which is great because I love Discovery and National Geographic! Almost as much as I like Nina from Imagination Movers! You dads know what I'm talking about! Anyways, Fletcher was way enthusiastic about telling his mom about the "giant crocodile that ate the wildebeest in the river!" He's only three and can get quite excited about these things. It got me thinking about the victimization of the poor wildebeest. Fletcher only knows what a wildebeest is because they get eaten by crocodiles, whom he thinks are really cool. Little does he know that basically the whole animal world likes to eat wildebeest. Personally, I've never tried it, but I'm sure it's quite nice. Lions,leopards,hyenas,cheetahs and crocodiles all love wildebeests. I'm almost sure that if one ever made it to the ocean, a giant orca would come right out of the ocean and grab one and pull it back in and play a game with it, flipping it around and kicking it with it's tail like one of those toys at a seaquarium. My point is, I'm sure that the wildebeest is a noble animal and I'm sure they try to do the right thing in their life, like being a good herd member, procreating, wandering thousands of miles on their annual migration across the savanna, crossing rivers that aren't meant to be crossed and running the gauntlet every time they want to get a friggin' drink. We all love watching the wildebeest giving birth and the miracle of nature as this little calf, within 20 minutes of being born, struggles to it's feet and takes it's first wobbly steps and soon is strong enough to join it's mother in returning to the herd. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it, as it is set upon by a pack of African hunting dogs and is torn to shreds so that the hunting dogs can feed their own newly born pups. And so we justify the loss of the wildebeest calf for the gain of the hunting dog pack. For that is truly the lot of the wildebeest isn't it? Birth,run, eat grass and be eaten.
This brings me to my old mate Brett. Brett, was for about 9 months, my roommate in Korea. You know how you sometimes have relationships with other people and it's not quite even. Like how, sometimes, the other person isn't really good for you or your not really good for that person. Well, Brett was like that but I still haven't figured out whether he was good for me or I was bad for for him or vice versa. We really were quite toxic for each other but only in the way that "something" always seem to happen. We got along great and never fell out at all, but there was always this feeling that the sum of our mischief was always greater than it's parts, if you know what I mean.
It's a bit weird, but most of the followers of this blog know someone else who follows this blog. It's mostly all friends and family and there is a lot of crossover as to who reads this but no one here has ever met Brett. Brett was tall and skinny and wore those big ugly "John Hughes" glasses. He was geeky and clean cut with a hair cut only an evangelist could love. He was also morally and ethically degenerate which totally belied his exterior appearance. He had, and I'm not making this up, a hole in his chest. In the middle of your chest where your breast bone is he had a hole large enough to fit your fist into. It is, to this day, the most singular weird thing that I have personally ever seen on a human being. Just weird.
I forget where he was from or what he did but we were roommates and we were good friends. It's not always like that in the military. Sometimes you have good friends and sometimes you get people that you barely talk to because you have absolutely nothing in common and it just doesn't click.
Anyways, Brett and I used go out a lot and we would hit a few of the regular spots in town. Invariably though, "something" would happen and after a while it would happen too often to be a coincidence. I can't go into detail of too many of the "somethings" but I can give a brief summary of a few:
Entering a hotel where we weren't guests at. Going into a room, deciding we didn't want to stay. Threw a sink out of the window(as you do) and trying to escape down the fire escape. Losing my wallet as I tried jump a fence and getting caught going back to get it.
Inciting a riot at a Korean baseball game by mooning the opposing fans. Apparently they don't appreciate that sort of carry-on there.
Brett got a master key (long story) that worked on every GMC vehicle on the base. The NCO bar was WAY on the other side of the base and we would "commandeer" vehicles to get us home and leave them in the neighboring dormitory for someone to find.
Getting kicked out of a charity fun run for taking a taxi.
Scaring new arrivals (him and I would pick them up at the airport) by running through toll booths and speeding past cops. (Local cops weren't allowed to stop military vehicles, but the new guys didn't know that.)
Wearing statutes that we bought at the market as necklaces. What we didn't know was that they represented fertility and we wondered why ladies were coming up the whole night wanting to rub our statutes.
We used to go to Seoul (pop. 15 million) and get on the subway and get off at a random stop and go exploring. Normally, we would bribe a local with booze and cigarettes to show us around. One time, we met a student, who we took out to a restaurant. When we came out the street was lined with riot police and at the adjacent park an anti-american rally was going on. We stood quietly at the back until Brett yelled "Yankees go home!" and then we had to run like hell to get out of there. Bad vibe.
Osan (the base) would often hold joint exercise with the South Korean Army to simulate an attack from the North. During certain phases we would be confined to quarters and with nothing to do we would go up on the roof to watch the boys play their games. When that got boring we would start water bombing the "invading forces" if they got within reach of our range. The dorms were officially off limits but if those special forces could have got a hold of us we were dead men.
These are just a few examples, none of which I am exactly proud of, but are only really the tip of the iceberg. Brett and I had a mutual friend Joe, who after enough of our antics said that in the future he would go out with one of us but not both of us (this was after the riot at the baseball). And that was it really. Apart things were generally pretty tame but when we were together it was just unusual how weird things would get. I'm not proud of these things, but they did happen, and they are part of the story. The only thing I'm trying to figure out, is if I was the friggin' wildebeest in this whole story or if we were just two old crocodiles. I'm not quite sure yet nor how I'll tell that story to Fletcher just yet.
