A Crappy Story

I have always heard people say that we shouldn't complain, I can't count the times that I have heard my parents say that to me as a kid. To be honest I never really listened to them when they said it...I just thought that it was another one of those things parents say to kids when they want things to go their way. (After all they always seemed to do their fair share of complaining themselves) I never liked that rule anyway, because I always had a long list of things to complain about and it didn't matter that no one seemed to listen...it just made me feel better to complain.

It wasn't until I was a young adult that I really began to rethink my position on complaining. I was 20 years old, in the Army stationed in Korea. In a brief moment of macho-ism I actually volunteered to due a 1 year tour there. I ended up at Camp Casey, a base that was just 30 miles from the DMZ. From the moment I arrived I had plenty of things to complain about. The air, the weather, the food, the way the people drove, you name it I complained about it. It seemed like I was always being selected for jobs like crawling through the mud, standing in the rain, basically all of the jobs that no one wanted. Sure enough I would complain about it, it didn't occur to me until later that I was being singled out because I was always complaining about something.
Like clockwork you could find me complaining, and the Army was very good at finding things to do that were worthy of my complaints, it was during one of those things that I was forced to take a different perspective and eventually break the habit of complaining.

We were out in the middle of nowhere, playing war games, we were scheduled to be out there for a week. A week of no showers, meals out of a box and itchy scratchy unforgiving foliage. (more stuff to complain about) It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it had not been cold and raining, but cold wet feet, an upset stomach and two sheets of toilet paper will make a grouch out of anyone especially a complainer like me. It was too cold...it was too wet...complain...complain...complain.

There was one highlight of the trip...one thing I was looking forward too. I had volunteered to be the assistant M60 gunner. The M60, was a big machine gun, the user of this weapon usually required an assistant to carry the extra gun barrel and the tripod used to set the weapon up. My reasons for volunteering were completely selfish. I volunteered merely because the assistant gunner got to carry a 45 caliber hand gun instead of the bulky M16. I had been scheming for months on How to get my hands on one of those .45's, and the time had finally arrived. I had already played out in my mind the cool pictures I was going to take with the .45 in my hands. I actually put my complaining on a momentary hold. I

The day came for our field exercise (training mission), I woke up refreshed and with a smile on my ace thinking about all of the fun I was going to have with that .45. As we were getting our gear together, I was just about to go and pick up that beautiful .45, I was informed by my First Sergeant (Boss) that I would not be issued a .45...and just like that it was over, no cool pictures...no fun. I felt like I had been robbed. After my First Sergeant walked away I resumed complaint mode. Not only did I not get the .45, but I still had to carry that bulky M-16 rifle along with the extra machine gun barrel and tripod-pod and the rest of my gear. My whole day had been ruined and I spent the entire time complaining about it. With every step I took the big bulky items weighed me down adding more fuel to the complaint fire.I didn't even try to walk fast, I just lingered in the back of the formation. I spent the entire day in a funk. By evening I was still griping and upset, so much so that by the time we were leaving for a night mission, I continued to linger at the back of the formation.

By nightfall, it was pitch black, (another thing to complain about) so dark that the only way I could see the people in front of me was by the little neon reflectors on the backs of their helmets, called cat eyes. I couldn''t' really complain out loud because we were supposed to be sneaking up on our enemies, but I was quietly muttering and complaining to myself. I got so caught up in my complaining that I had my head down feeling sorry for myself, for the next mile and a half I continued to have myself a pity party...I was just about to make my complaints heard when suddenly ALL of the cat eyes in front of me disappeared. I mean I couldn't see a single reflector.... It was so dark that I did not move or do anything. Just as I was about to call out...I heard a bunch of loud frantic screaming and hollering. I had no idea what was going on and I couldn't''t even see what was around so I could try to run. The screaming began getting louder and louder and everyone was shouting and screaming the same thing over and over...

They were screaming s**t! (S.ugar H.oney I.ced T.ea!,) over and over again. That's all they were saying s**t! Almost in unison they just kept yelling that over and over again. I didn't know what to do, I could hear them but not see them. I couldn't run because I didn't know which way to go, besides my equipment was so heavy I wouldn't have been very fast at all. Just as my imagination was about to run wild about what was going on, a platoon that was up on a hill overlooking our position shined their lights down on the area just a few steps in front of me and revealed what had happened and why my comrades were continually yelling the same profanity...

As the light shone down on the location of the voices, I saw them, they were up to their necks in crap...literally. they were squirming and trying their best to keep it from getting into their mouths, (which was getting kind of hard to do with all of their screaming, squirming and their yelling. Turns out that they had inadvertently stumbled onto a pit that the local farmers used to collect and store waste to use for fertilizer in their rice fields. They were all literally in the sh**t creek, and for the first time on that trip I was happy and laughing ...it kind of sucked for them but I was so relieved that it wasn't me in that crappy situation.
Eventually we got them out of the pit, and they all had to be flown to the nearest hospital due to all of the parasites in the feces. They were all later released with a clean bill of health although they did smell like crap for several weeks after that, earning them the nickname of "The Dooky Platoon" as well as subjecting them to a host of bad jokes.

I learned a valuable lesson on that day about complaining. I realized that had I not been so weighed down, I probably when have been right in the front of that formation. I could have very well earned my own spot on the "Dooky Platoon" and no amount of cool pictures or fun with a .45 would have been worth it. The very things that I spent the entire time griping and complaining about, were the very things that saved me from taking a dump. I was so upset that my plan did not 't work out, and I spent all of that time griping about the extra equipment I had to carry, (never mind the fact that I volunteered for it) but it was that extra load that slowed me down and placed me at the end of the line...and ultimately kept me from sharing the same fate as my fellow soldiers.

From that moment on, I really began to take a different perspective on complaining, especially when I am complaining about things that don't seem to go my way. These days I even joke about not having anything to complain about (and the fact that no one listens when I do it anyway)

I shared this with you in the hopes that maybe next time it seems like things aren't going your way, or like life isn't quite fair, take a moment and instead of complaining, think about all of the crap you just might be avoiding or missing because of the it.