The Winter of My Discontent

When I first moved to New Hampshire I was told to get my affairs in order, I would likely die this winter by snow storm. Inevitably at some point during the six months of continuous freezing maelstrom that is a Northern New England winter I would perish in a snow bank, in front of a snow plow, underneath a snow mobile, or inside a giant snow ball. The towns would all freeze over and the wilds would be no refuge. Especially seeing as how they would both be packed with blood thirsty snow men living in snow forts bent on righteous snow vengeance, the worst kind of vengeance.

Instead there was never more than a few inches of snow. Temperatures never got below zero. Only actually got to zero once the whole time. And my snot never froze to my face -- a true indicator of a good winter I am told. January was actually most notable for the amount of drizzle there was. It was an angry drizzle, no doubt, but just drizzle. I never got my chance to break a leg snow skiing, fall through the ice ice fishing, fall through the ice ice skating, fall through the ice snow shoeing, or even to build an army of eight foot tall snowman storm troopers a la Calvin and Hobbes. I was robbed. I was promised an icy death and all I got was a relatively temperate, boring waiting period between fall and spring.

Speaking of spring. It is now springing and I am told to anticipate the start of Mud Season where, from what I can gather, everything gets covered in mud. I'm not buying it, though. I come from a state where it rains mud! Unless I'm swept away in a river of brown goop sometime this April I will be unimpressed.

Not all was lost this winter. We did have enough time to build a tiny late season snowman -- err snowthing.

Part snowman. Part mothman. Trapped in two worlds, he is accepted in none. He will lead a life of tragic irony chasing the light that will one day be his demise. Coming to Lifetime this spring.

More C4

The real test of a medical unit's combat readiness comes not in their mock platoon marches or field training exercises nor in their mastering of the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) classes. It doesn't come in the twenty-four hour hutment confinement due to training being cancelled on account of freak San Antonio snow. It's not even whether they can go to the communal showers and strip naked and wash and rinse all while avoiding prolonged eye contact next to one another which successfully tells whether they can successfully carry stretchers through mine fields together. The real test of a real unit full of real men comes in the commode.

An Army Strong platoon in today's Army of One can sit down, relax, and watch each other go number two. That's the short of it. That's the test of a unit's combat grit. And in light of that profound military truth, we, collectively, failed. The test as it was ingeniously crafted comes from the bathroom's design as all the stalls, which are for whatever reason already spaced unusually tightly together giving you little in the way of elbow room, were, to perhaps make you forget you had nowhere to place your elbows, also freakishly close to the opposing row of stalls immediately across the way. And lest you pause to think too long about the fact that you could probably touch knees with the guy across from you were he to be a particularly tall individual, you realize that in fact you could touch his knees -- and perhaps gently caress them -- because there are no doors to any of the stalls. There is nothing but open space seperating you from the guy and white cinder block walls of the toilet across from you. A real hero -- I believe the Army was suggesting -- will sit across from his battle buddy, stare him deeply in the eye, and engage in friendly banter while taking a dump. He may even whistle a patriotic tune. Discuss the latest tourniquet application techniques maybe. Thumb wrestle. Whatever exactly is supposed to take place while two dudes respectively sit across from each other in a race to finish their business first, the end result is inevitably a crisp salute and a new level of unit cohesiveness.

Finding this to be the worse of two options were the other option to be small bowel obstruction followed by colonic perforation from never using the restroom again, we collectively came to an unspoken modus operandi. As there were four stalls in each row of the livestock pen the first person would use one of the stalls closest to the far wall while the next person would use the stall furthest from the far wall. Each successive soldier could use neighboring stalls if facing the same direction and feeling friendly, but this was known to be discouraged. Under no conditions was it acceptable to sit immediately across or immediately diagonal to another toilet user, and it was punishable by death if you accidentally sat on someone else's lap. If you were to arrive and find the maximum occupancy of four out of eight stalls in use you would politely return later, you didn't need to go that bad. If you did need to go that bad, congratulations you now know four people who hate your guts. In the end it proved successful -- I never had to watch what God never intended for us to watch -- but our esprit de corps suffered as we lacked that I've-seen-you-poo level of commitment that only veteran, battle tested units ever possess. We may have technically passed the training but we failed each other. C4's most dangerous landmines were truthfully not the literal landmines but the I-don't-want-you-looking-at-me-like-that landmines deep inside ourselves.

We were then forced to do jumping jacks in gas masks and hazmat suits, which -- coincidentally -- is a good way to induce fainting and general claustrophobia-related freaking out.