[Vision2020] Dipping the Flag for Jesus

[Chasuk]

Thank you, Nick.  An amusing story.  I have an amusing story to tell
that is just as ludicrous.

I participated in the color guard, once, while stationed at RAF
Lakenheath,  which consisted only of raising and lowering the flag
with a little (limited, really) pomp and ceremony.  It wasn't
difficult, except that I am extremely uncoordinated, dislike drill
generally, and displays of patriotism specifically.  They didn't ask
me a second time, for reasons which will become clear.

There were several of us, with mock rifles, sabers, and other
equipment.  I think I held one of the sabers.  The airman designated
to raise and lower the flag had a cold.  In the morning, he raised the
flag quite admirably.  It glided upward at a properly sedate pace, we
snapped to attention and saluted, and then we were done.  When we
returned to lower the flag, this airman's wife was standing there with
a Polaroid camera, waiting to take a picture of her husband performing
this honorable duty.  She was very sweet.  It was almost a touching
moment.  Except that the CO then arrived and berated this airman in
front of his wife for making the flag "sick."  Those were his words.
"You have contaminated the flag with your germs.  You have made her a
sick flag.  You should be ashamed."  The airman nearly cried.  I
laughed, not because I thought the situation was particularly funny,
but because I realized that I finally learned the gender of the flag.
Flags have been ladies to me ever since.

The CO (and in this case I mean Clenching Orifice) then waved over a
young ROTC cadet to replace our germ-infested airman.  Everything was
going smoothly until this cadet sneezed as the flag reached level with
his nose.  A gobbet of snot shot out and adhered to the flag.  The
airman's wife captured this moment on Polaroid film, complete with the
contorted facial expression of the Clenching Orifice.

After the ceremony, I was called aside by Clenching Orifice.

"Did you laugh?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Why?"

"Because it was funny."

Our conversation grew heated.   He called me a prick, and I told him
that if I was a prick, he should fellate me.  He didn't know what the
word fellate meant, and I declined to provide a definition, so he
demanded that I write it down.  I obliged, writing down a random
vowel-consonant combination.

There were no repercussions from the incident.  Years later, when I
was a civilian, we met in pub.  I asked him why he had never reported
me.  He admitted that he had lost the piece of paper.  We both thought
it was funny.  We never became friends, but when we bumped into each
other in the future, I called him Captain Clenching Orifice (he was a
Major by that time) and he called me Airman A$$hole.

We still have a mutual acquaintance.  I'll send him this.  He might
find it funny.