lascivious spiders, angry corpses, and robotic chessmen

1.) I was injured in the Gulf War by my own gun, the M249 "SAW". I tried to disassemble it with the charging handle cocked (which coils up a massive spring), and when I removed the stock, the steel firing pin blasted out at me, slammed into my mouth, broke two of my teeth, and ricocheted off into the desert. My company commander misunderstood my explanation of the events leading to the injury and talked about nominating me for a Purple Heart.

(It's all true except for the Purple Heart. The Army doesn't reward stupidity... often.)

2.) I've been literally knocked unconscious twice. Once by wrassling with my older cousin, and once by walking into the roof of a porch that had been built by two short guys. . . my father-in-law and his brother.

(My cousin knocked me out. My uncle-in-law's five-foot ten-inch porch only made me cuss my guts out and punch the fender of my car. I'm five-ten-and-a-half -- did I mention?)

3.) After the third consecutive morning of waking up in the woods with spider bites on my lips, I was told by an Army medic that there must be some chemical in my saliva that tastes especially good to arachnids.

(You're gonna hate me for this, but this one's a lie because it was only two nights in a row. Cheap, I know, but spiders DO think I taste good.)

4.) This one time in surgery, I got a bloody scalpel imbedded about three inches in my forearm. The nurse made a sick-looking face, wriggled it out, and we all kept working until the procedure was finished. I bled inside my sleeve for twenty-five minutes.

(Also cheap, but this one's a lie because I only had to bleed in my sleeve for like five minutes. It was a short procedure. Take heart though, friends -- for the rest are anything but cheap.)

5.) Most people won't understand this, but it's actually fairly difficult to lift the body of a deceased patient onto the tray in the bottom drawer of the morgue cooler. They always end up cock-eyed and crooked, and it's a real problem. . . good thing I know a trick. You get down like a runner in starting blocks, and then you slam that sucker shut. Hard! The body kind of rolls up on its side, then flop back down perfectly centered in the stainless steel tray. Works every time.

(Not every time. After one slam in particular, the body ended up wedged way in the back corner of the drawer with his eyes glaring at us all angry-like from out of the darkness. The tech I was with summed it up perfectly, "Oohhhh, we're going to hell".)

6.) My most recent job-related injury occurred while I was retracting a rather large vagina so a surgeon could suture in a bladder sling. He got a little sloppy while he was sewing, and sunk that freaking suture needle deep into the web of my thumb. I was like, "Ouch!... Dude, how could you miss that vagina? -- It's huge!"

(I would never say that to a surgeon -- he felt bad enough about missing the huge vagina without me reminding him. The worst part, though, was that while I was turned around changing into a fresh glove, he kept sewing with the same needle that poked me -- an unprecedented case of 'reverse occupational exposure'.)

7.) My ultimate dream is to learn to play the bouhrain, bouzouki, and penny whistle, and live in a castle tower with Guinness on tap and robot servants made up to look like chessmen who can pour the Guinness and bring it to me. (I would say, 'pour black-and-tans', but that's just a little too unrealistic.)

(Hells yeah! This is the one! It's all true, baby!)