As I was saying, pictures are those necessary gap fillers to keep a person's attention without making the author work too hard. After all, story without pictures is like Thanksgiving without food...all that's left is conversation. And let's be honest, do you really care about Aunt Sally's bunions? Without food, how would you distract that cousin who always wants to 'borrow' money, but never plans on paying you back? If we were forced to rely solely on relationships to get us through Thanksgiving, we'd never visit most of our relatives again! We need the gorge-induced stupor to get us over the hump (or humps, as Andy Sipowicz would say).
This week's blog entry is about the combination people, places, and circumstances that make up those nuggets of wisdom called 'life lessons'. I had the opportunity to live in Alaska for a few years. Anyone who fails to run away from me within the first few minutes of being introduced will soon know my love of 'The Last Frontier'. I love everything about the state...except the mosquitoes. If I had but one word to describe those little buggers, I'd choose 'aggressive'. How bad are they? During the initial spawn they'll try to get blood from anything, including wood. I witnessed a mosquito repeatedly sticking her 'blood chute' into different parts of the banister on our balcony. Not just wood...painted, treated wood! Anyway, today's life lesson is about teamwork and how there are limits to what a friend will do for you.
Teamwork is touted as the lifeblood of all organizations (as opposed to the 'deathblood', I guess). It's a way of controlling the by-products of people naturally forming cliques and clubs based on similarities among them. 'Jocks and nerds', as it were. The military is no different, only teamwork here could mean taking a bullet for your buddy. Service members often form bonds with each other that eclipse those they have with family members. All for one and one for all, except...
During a nice organizational run (PT for the laymen) through the woods, we were joined by a black bear cub. It wasn't threatening us; the little guy just wanted to play. First, allow me to say such a situation is only cute in cartoons. In real life, cubs are never far from mom...who tends to get angry when humans are near her babies. You can try to debate this with the parent, but I assure you it's a fruitless endeavor and you'll just end up one of two ways:
1. Dead
2. Almost dead, but wishing you were fully dead
That means when you see a young animal whose mature parent outweighs you by several hundred pounds, consider the baby a walking billboard for 'FREE BRUTAL DEATH'. So the baby is jogging along with us, and its sibling is at the wood's edge excitedly jumping around ready to join in. I then heard two things that sent chills down my spine. The first was mama bear angrily coming out of the woods. The second was one of my comrades yelling words I'll never forget:
“OH (fill-in-the-blank)! It's a (fill-in-the-blank) baby bear! EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!”
“Every man for himself”...the battle cry uttered prior to being trampled by your friends trying to escape. Consider the phrase a liability waiver for all involved. Almost in unison, 25 adults began screaming and frantically running away from the cub. The startled cub ran back to momma, who quickly herded her babies into the brush. It was at that point I realized few people are willing to be ripped apart by an angry animal...especially if they're not the slowest person in the group.
That's it for this week. While you're pondering my lesson in teamwork, I hope you'll join me in raising awareness of something that plagues our world. We need to have the citizens in developed, developing, and undeveloped nations join together and ban ear-buds. Why? Because one always falls out of my ear while I'm exercising, which means they suck and should go away.
-ckj
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