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Well since it's my birthday I'll look back on some of my birthday's that occured in odd situations.
Not nearly as dirty as that sounds.

My 21st birthday happened when I was in Survival school. I remember it fondly (insert shimmering flashback here).

We were out in the field practicing our E & E (escape and evasion) techniques. Things had started off fairly good, with 0400 wake up to simulated gunfire, and a mad dash through the woods to escape our potential captors. Me and my evasion buddy grabbed out stuff and started high tailing it through the woods, when I suddenly realized we were all running the exact same way.

"Wait!" I shouted. "Let's go this way a little and just hunker down while everyone else runs off."

So that's what we did. We made a 90 degree turn and hid under some pine trees for a little while. We watched lots of people run by, lots of people get caught, and even had few close calls ourselves.

Once things had settled down we crawled out of hiding spot, and started off to the next point we were supposed to reach by that evening. Now somewhere along the way we go turned around. And ended up wandering in the woods for a few hours. My general sense of direction sucks, so when we were supposed to go east I led us south....for about 2 hrs.

So now we're lost, and it's hot in the mountains in July. Getting a little dehydrated and wandering up and down the mountains had started to piss me off. So we do the natural thing in a situation like this. I found a rode, figured out which way to go from there and started walking right down the middle of the road. At this point I was hoping to be caught because I was tired, and my evasion buddy had started to whine an hour or so before. I actually contemplated just leaving him in the woods.

Eventually we found our way where we were supposed to be and got to rest a little bit.

Hmmm...a couple of times while deployed I aged too.

In the desert they would have a birthday meal once a month for everyone that had a birthday that month. They would serve steak and lobster at those meals..so usual the response was pretty good. Now it wasn't the best steak and lobster, but hey when you're in the suck every little bit helps.

Well on this particular occasion, I had a mission that day. Which meant I had about an 18 hour work day, and then I would get a chance to go and enjoy my steak and lobster. If we landed and time, and debrief didn't take too long, and the crew could get there stuff done, and we could make the drive back to where we lived, and....you can see how this is going.

But all of those things lined up, and when we got back I had about 15 minutes to get over to the chow hall. I getting all happy about the prospect of munching on some steak and lobster and started to walk a little bit faster the closer I got to the chow hall.

As I was walking up the entrance way I notice a Securtiy Forces guy with his M-16 standing in the way. I dodge right to go around him, and he steps back in the way. I go left, he blocks me.

"Dude! What the hell?" I ask.

"Sorry. The Secretary of Defense is eating now. You can't go in." He says.

"What?" I ask, and try to go around him again.

He blocks me again. "SecDef is in there. You can't go in." He says again.

"But, steak." I stammer "lobster."

"Sorry." He says.

So I walked away disappointed. Thinking maybe I'll have to go have Burger King or something.
Just then I spot one of my buddies walking toward me carrying a take out box.

"Hey man!" he says. "Got you something for your birthday." and he handed me the box.

I slowly open the box expecting some steak and lobster, but it was something much much better. He had somehow gotten one of the contractors to go off base and pick me some Schwarmas. Schwarmas are like Saudi Arabian gyros. Soooo soooo good. And they were still warm. Best desert birthday gift ever!

Good story - but nobody got killed or got poopy blue water sprayed on them

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Not every story has to have death and poop in it!!

You sir do not know if what you speak

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Ok...this is a rant...but it's military related.

The freakin VA is screwing me. That is all. Now I gotta fight with them. Should be fun.

Saw your post on Facebook - I cannot think of anything much sadder than the way you explained it.

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The best part was when they denied one of my claims, they noted in the denial that there were several complaints of pain spread over a number of years. But since the Air Force doctors never had me specifically treated for it it was denied as a "chronic" problem. Then they defined what chronic was. It was mostly the incompetent flight doctors that I saw throughout the years the never actually treated anything that have caused me problems now. Instead of saying hey you've complained about this for years we should check it out, they just prescribed more Motrin and said I was good. There have been times when I was taking 1200 mg of Motrin just so I could walk around like a normal person. Then the Motrin stops working and I switch up to Tylenol and take 1600 mg of that, then on to Advil, and whatever else.

But....the 10 minute appointment I had with the tech at the VA determined that nothing was wrong enough.

Guess I'm gonna be taking painkillers for the rest of my life.
Which will probably be shortened by all the painkillers.

I am naive enough to think these things are the exception and not the rule but I am sure that I am wrong and just like everywhere else the government screws over soldiers as bad as it does the rest of us one way or another

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So Alex and I were talking about SPAM on FB today, and that made me think of a wonderful invention called the MRE. MRE is the acronym for Meal Ready to Eat if you didn't know. They ususally come package all together in a nice little case that you can't open with anything short of a machete or automatic rifle. They contain an entree, a seasoning packet, a plasticware packet, a dessert packet, and a packet of strike anywhere matches. Every single one has some freakin matches. I used to tons of these things laying around.

Anyway there are all different varieties of MREs now a days. There vegetarian ones, and new ones and Kosher ones. Lots of choices out there for the hungry soldier. Heck they even come with a warming packet. It's a plastic bag with some chemical in it that when mixed with water creates heat.......and hydrogen gas. Oh well a warm MRE is a good MRE.

We used to get these things on our missions. A whole case or two for the crew. Now this was before they came out with the new MREs and I'm pretty sure I've eaten some that were left over from the 'Nam. Usually the only way you could tell how old they were was from the M&Ms. That's right. On top of a dehydrated brownie or some form of rock cake, there was a pack of M&Ms. Loved the thrill of opening the packet thinking of the joy that was getting ready to be had by those little bits of candy coated chocolate that wouldn't melt in you hand. But sometimes you would just end up dumping a bunch of colorless gobs of powder and candy coating in your hand. At this point you begin wondering how long that mystery loaf you had just consumed had been in that package.

But back to Spam. One of my favorite MREs was what was referred to at Ham Loaf. Not sure if it was actual ham and I'm pretty sure it was never part of a loaf, but man was it tasty. Whatever it was actually constructed out of. Sure sometimes you had to scrape the gel coating off the outside to get to that yumminess, but once you got over your aversion to left over slime it wasn't too bad. Tasted pretty much like sandwich meat, only it was patty shaped and about a half an inch thick. I would eat those like they were going out of style. Plus the peanut butter in the squeeze tube on top of some old crackers made a great follow-up to the ham loaf. And sort of cleansed the palettle. Or at least coated it so you couldn't taste anything for a couple of hours.

Just remember if you go to try an MRE they were made for guys in combat in the field. So each one has about 10,000 calories of stuff in it. Hard to believe I'm not 400 lbs by now, I used to each 3 or 4 during a 14 hour flight.

Reading through this thread. Awesomeness.