"Laughter is an instant vacation." -Milton Berle

Theres many things that we have experienced here, some of them good, some of them bad and some of them, well, just there. But theres one thing about being with a group of guys that have become like brothers to you, and thats the ability to just have a good time despite the situation that you find yourself in. That is one of the greatest things I've noticed durring this deployment, is that we can be in a horrible situation (combat related or not) and just make the best of it. The last 2 days, I can honestly say I have had some of the best times here in Iraq, not by anything that we have done mission wise, but just having a good laugh at the expense of myself and others in our platoon.

It all started on the last patrol that I went on. We had our First Sergeant that headed out with us, and his driver, a mortar guy, used to go out with our platoon alot back in the day. He's a great guy and a part of me misses the good times when he was along! *tear* Hahah. Anyways, he's a smoker and normally smokes Marlboro #27 cigarettes. I smoke Marlboro Lights and while we were smoking he gave me a pack saying he didn't like smoking lights. I thought it was an awesome gesture, and of course I took the free pack! I lit up a cigarette from the pack and immediatly there was a semi-loud snap as the end of my cigarette exploded. I'm not going to lie, it scared the piss out of me for a second, and for some stupid reason the first thought in my head was sniper. I know, its dumb, but thats what I thought, but that passed quickly. After everyone got their laugh, he proceeded to tell me that every single cigarette in there has been rigged to explode. Alright, well now IM going to have some fun with this.

It became my personal mission to get as many people with one of the exploding cigarettes as I could. I managed to get a few people while we were still at the outpost but eventually everyone knew that I had them, so I couldn't give them away. Thats when I decided to give one to one of the Iraqi Army guys. It was pretty funny and he refused to smoke the rest of it! It was in good fun, so dont worry. We both were having a good laugh from it. Later while out on a dismounted patrol, when we finished up we were waiting around for the trucks to come back and pick us up when one of the guys in my squad wanted a smoke, but left his in the truck. Here ya go, I've got one for ya! He totally forgot I had those, and when he lit it up, he was startled by the pop like everyone else. The best part was there were about 15 Iraqi kids that were around us. All of us start laughing and pointing and ALL the kids start doing the same. He must of felt like an ass! Always great to see others suffer! I can't recall how many people I got, but it was pretty close to every one that was in the pack. And just now as I'm writing this, my grenadier finally smoked the one I snuck in to his pack on a cigarette break we just took. GOOD TIMES!!

Once we finally came back in, I was viewing a video in a bulletin sent to me on MySpace and it was one of those that out of nowhere this Exorcist looking chic pops out and theres a loud screeching and it scares the piss out of you. I showed it to my good buddy, but before doing so I hooked up my sound system and cranked it up. Lets just say it scared the piss out of him. He yelled and jumped up punching in front of him. Another guy introduced me to this maze, that as you go through it, it gets hard and you really have to concentrate and then out of nowhere that Exorcist creature scares you. Well, we then began tricking everyone telling them that we'd give them $20 if they could beat this certin level and talk it up and it was just hilarious. We ended up getting 4 or 5 people good and the last one was my grenadier in my team and there was probably about 15 people around him watching him. Again, another great laugh at someone elses expense! I can honestly say I haven't laughed that hard in a long while.

The last bit of fun has come from something that we have come up with now refered to as the "Cornbread Challenge." It started off as a punishment from my grenadier to my automatic rifleman because he had secretly ashed a whole cigarette on his head. To make up for it, he had to eat 5 pieces of cornbread from the chowhall. Well I figured that he couldn't do it and so he bet me he could. We gave him 20 mins to do so, and he couldn't throw up until it was all down. He could drink or do whatever he wanted to the pieces tho. On the day of, he ended up making another $20 bet with another guy so we started the challenge. He almost made it, 4 1/2 pieces but he finally ended up running out of the chowhall puking as he barely made it out of the door!! After that, people began saying they could do it and the Cornbread Challenge was born. For the next contestant we changed the rules a little and if he could do it in 10 minutes my grenadier would give him $60. This was a big guy and I actually thought he'd do it, but at 4 1/4 the cornbread got the best of him and he went to the trash can and began regurgatating the cornbread through his mouth and nose! He had done this on a non-empty stomach so we amended a final change to the challenge. 6 pieces in 11 minutes, $60. We wrote the challenge up on our platoon board, and listed the failures so far and put up a signup list. We had our first taker that night.

Given the popularity of the challenge now, people were beginging to want to watch in hopes of seeing someone fail and puke their guts out. Our in house video guru was around for the next challenger, along with 8 of us that were not on patrol. We were now going to video record each attempt in hopes of catching more and more desctructive failures! The next participant was someone that was going to give this challenge a run for its money (literally... $60) and we were a little worried he might do it. He went to town, but again just like the rest, just after finishing the 5th piece and with 1 minute left on the clock he couldn't handle it anymore and the cornbread came back up! The best part was another guy made a $10 bet with me that he would do it and of course he lost. So this is now $30 I've made off side bets due to the Cornbread Challenge. As it stands, 3 men have entered, and none have come out a victor. The challenge still stands, and we may have contestant #4 tomorrow. Hopefully loser number 4!!!

The last bit of hilarity came while we were eating at the chowhall. Just before we were about to finish up, the warning sirens came on for incoming mortar rounds/rockets. Well, we have this new unit that is here in large numbers and I don't know if its what they've been told or trained on, but when that siren went off 1/2 the chowhall dove for the ground and were laying on the ground and hiding under tables. The rest of us just kind of sat there. This was my cue to get up and casually walk over to where the togo boxes were and grab one to put the rest of my food up so I could take it back with me. As Im walking there, people are diving in the front door hitting the ground as I'm trying to step over and around those huddled on the floor. I got a good kick out of it. Afterwords we headed out and back to our rooms laughing most of the way at what we had just experienced.