Lt Marcus came into the POL office after lunch looking like he'd been visiting with the Commander again. He was muttering under his breath and looking down and went straight into his desk and plopped down without a single punch line. Strong signs of having received counsel from on high. Against my better judgement, I asked what was wrong.
Turns out the Commander's wife had to be in Kaiserslautern for a big deal luncheon that day and the Commander had put their car in the shop for an oil change that turned into a much longer than anticipated stay. Overhearing the conversation between wife and Commander, LT Marcus had volunteered his little Honda for the wife to drive. He even delivered it to her quarters and walked back to the company. When he got back , there was a thundercloud over the First Sergeant's desk and rumblings coming out of the Commander's office. The First Sergeant told Marcus that the Commander wanted him NOW. The conversation that followed was very loud and extremely personal. It referred to family lineage, personal preferances, anatomical weirdness and a total lack of cranial development. And Marcus left the office and walked up to the fuel yard in a thick blue funk. Here's why:
Marcus was a snuffer...that is, he enjoyed packing his lower lip with snuff to the point of utter distension. Snuffers are easy to spot, they always carry a little cup around with them, either an old paper coffee cup or some other fast food cast off. When the juice builds up in their mouth, the have to spit into the cup...not nice to spit on the ground...not in the company area or motor pools, anyway. It was Marcus' habit to keep a cup in his car and have one in his office and usually carried one around. That morning he had left his active spit cup in the car, balanced in a notch in the dash. As soon as Mrs Commander started out, at the first right turn she had to make, the cup tipped onto her lovely summer dress, white purse and gloves. She was not happy, in fact she was thoroughly disgusted at wearing the contents of the cup and at missing the very important opportunity to be seen at the luncheon and communicated that to the Commander...like all of us, he lived by the Axiom, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy". So he made sure that LT Marcus was able to share in their unhappiness. Adding to Marcus' unhappiness was the fact that he didn't see it as being any fault of his. "She shoulda seen the cup there...but no...she just blasts away like it was my fault their car got hung up waiting for an oil filter...and she freaks out over a little backky juice...the cup wasn't even full, well, more than half full. And now I gotta listen to the Captain eating my shorts and next time I see her, she's gonna rip my butt...and worst of all, she threw away by best spitcup!!!"