I was Warned

So I just finished up a mission a little while ago.  Everything went really well for the most part and we were back a little early, which was a nice surprise.  So, after we land we go to the flight equipment shop and turn our stuff back into them.  I am really horribly forgetful; every time I go and visit family I manage to leave something behind.  Sometimes it’s something small like a coffee cup or 1 pair of socks.  Other times its big stuff, like a chest of drawers or a popcorn maker.  It’s gotten to the point that any time I visit my family in San Diego I have to pile my stuff up and stick my wallet and keys on top so that it is literally impossible to leave without at least seeing the stuff before I leave it behind.

So that’s why in AFE (airborne flight equipment) I like to pat myself down to make sure I didn’t hide something in one of my many pockets that I need to turn back in.  It was during this pat down when I got to my left thigh pocket that I felt something soft, wet and squishy.  It was then that I realized that my leg had been….moist and rather sticky for a couple hours now.  It’s sort of like when you finally feel that rock in your shoe and you realize that you’ve been walking with it all day.

Earlier in the morning at breakfast, I was packing up a lunch in the dfac.  I made a sandwich and grabbed some chips and other stuff and stuffed it all in a to-go box.  Except it didn’t all fit so I shoved some things in my pockets to save space.  That’s when one of our grizzled old linguists was reminded of his last deployment when he went and put a banana in his ankle pocket and then proceeded to forget about it.  6 hours later he goes to sit on his foot, because after 6 hours a foot becomes more comfortable than a chair.  He squished that banana up real good without even thinking of it.  He had to run to the back and start scooping gross nasty mashed banana out of his leg pocket, like really deep down in there of some seriously messed up fruit.  Then had to sit there with it for the rest of the flight, let it really dry up and harden into his flight suit.

It was one those it-funny-when-it-happens-to-them stories that had me rolling.  I told myself I was going to learn from his mistake and take the moral of the story to hear, ‘Never forget about the banana in your pocket’.  Well we got on the plane and I instantly forgot about the banana in my pocket.  I put it in my thigh pocket so that way it would be super difficult to sit on it.  Well I found a way.  So there I was, in AFE, scooping gross, disgusting, smashed banana out of my pocket and into the trash.  Take it from me, you don’t ever want to forget about the banana in your pocket.