SARGE REPLIES | 2006-11-26
I screwed up.
When Sergeant Mark said "armchair blowhard" he was talking to Alan B., not me.
And he is right. Alan B. IS long on promises and short on performance.
Which leaves me out here in a bare-assed, familiar position.
I wish the mistakes I make would be more subtle. I tend to make flat statements, and when I'm wrong, I'm just flat, frigging WRONG.
It gets worse. I accurately described Mark as a SERGEANT. When you declare someone a sergeant you are not assigning him the task of being diplomatic. So he said I was making an ass of myself. The whole thing about being a sergeant is that you kick people in the ass.
HARD.
If ***I*** had not made Mark a sergeant, he might have said, "SIR! You misread the text. SIR!"
Sergeants are where the rubber meets the road. Someone once accurately described noncoms as the last ten years before you actually meet the enemy.
Mark may have made it a little easier on the old man.
If he had, I'd have ripped off his stripes.
I made Mark a sergeant so that he would remove every race of sympathy and "Why can't we all be friends?" from the makeup of what had once been a human being. He is assigned not only war, but the last ten yards of war.
Mark, you exposed me as a complete nincompoop.
That's a good start.
But you haven't earned your stripes yet.