How To Prepare for a Deployment (w/ a humorous twist)

[Guest JHatmaker]

Ran across this list in a magazine, as compiled in theatre by U.S. Marines.

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong bunk".

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a translucent plastic sheet down the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead to chest level. Keep 4 inches of soapy cold water on the floor, stop cleaning the toilet. Leave 2-3 sheets of toilet paper on a used roll, or for best effect, remove the toilet paper altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom altogether and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take a shower, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Everytime there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lubricating oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on HIGH for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for 70's era movies shown in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have a paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable white sauce poured over partially cooked noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random time during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and go to the shower as fast as you can. Simulare there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking it.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and rear doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill everytime you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you. Also bring your flashlight and gun.

22. Go to the bathroom even when you just have to fart "just in case" every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your garage door after supper and then say; "Sorry, it's for the other Smith".

24. Wash only 15 minutes of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees.

After a week, unroll them and without inroning or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for malaria.

26. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale call.

27. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

28. While traveling down the roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

29. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simutaneously in your driveway at 3:00am, when your neighbors come out, tell them everything is ok and that you're just registering mortars.

30. Drink you soda's and water lukewarm.

31. Spread white gravel throughout your house and yard.

32. Make your kids clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before than come inside.

33. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4's are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

34. Continuously ask your wife to allow you to buy an M-Gator.

35. When your 5 year old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After 2 weeks, give your son the gum.

36. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for diseases and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dig in the neighbor's back yard.

37. Wait for the coldest/hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/air conditioning system. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get hot/cold.

38. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another 6 months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.

But on a serious note, thank you to all the Armed Service Men and Women who are deployed right now. We appreciate your service and all the little things you guys have to miss and put up with while you're abroad. Get home safe.

[Armed Aviator]

+1 . . . Thank You all for your service!

[Guest oldsmobile98]

To those who are serving or have served... THANK YOU!!

[Guest TargetShooter84]

Thanks for protecting our freedom!

[John]

Big thanks to all who serve and served.

[Guest reaper1880]

wow hatmaker just brought back the nightmares of my 11 and a half month govt, vaction lol its like he was there with us. and all of ya lls thank you s are welcome

[Guest FredG17]

For the Sailors out there... You should have added Fill water jag with water and two cups of gasoline. That should give you the right taste and smell of drinking water.

[Guest colombianito1021]

Being here in Afghanistan, this list is pretty funny.

[Farman]

I really got worried reading the first half of #11.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries ......

Thanks to all protecting our freedoms!!!

Edited April 8, 2010 by Farman

[USMCJG]

[Guest rystine]

Great stuff, I got another one to add to the list. . .

39) Walk for 2-3 hours in circles around your neighborhood, always staying in a 1 square mile area. You will cover the same ground several times and your neighbors will look at you like your an idiot, but just keep walking. Repeat at least 3 times daily.

[Guest mustangdave]

Great stuff, I got another one to add to the list. . .

39) Walk for 2-3 hours in circles around your neighborhood, always staying in a 1 square mile area. You will cover the same ground several times and your neighbors will look at you like your an idiot, but just keep walking. Repeat at least 3 times daily.

If you include the family this qualifies as Platoon/Squad PT

[LagerHead]

Being here in Afghanistan, this list is pretty funny.

They haven't beaten your sense of humor out of you? Good.

Thanks to all of you who serve and have served, and to your families for letting us send you away.