Gather 'Round

I have a story my friends. Oh yes… I have a story. It’s a story of adventure, drama, betrayal, and clothes hangers.

It all started yesterday. Yesterday is henceforth dubbed the destroyer of dreams…for yesterday they made me move into a new tent. We went from our company having something like 4 or 5 tents to only 2. I guess the military decided that having any space whatsoever was just uncalled for so they condensed us. So, basically, I went from having a bottom bunk to sleep in, a top bunk to throw crap on, a full wardrobe to store stuff in, and a fair amount of floor space to having just a top bunk to sleep in and half a wardrobe. The half that my bunkmate left me with is the half that has only 1 shelf and a huge space with a bar to hang stuff on. I have a few hangers, but not enough to hang everything on. I asked someone if the PX was open yesterday and they said it was. So I walked the ~1 mile to the PX in the middle of the afternoon to find out that it’s not open on Fridays. I then walked back and decided I’d go back today after work. At work today I had to do some stuff that the military help desk just wasn’t equipped to do so I went and grabbed my laptop and brought it in so I could do this stuff on non-military equipment. Everything there was fine other than it was going to take 5 hours to download an anti-virus program I wanted and I left. Now, the helpdesk isn’t very far at all from the PX but I had my laptop and you can’t have bags in the PX…so I walked back and put my laptop up, changed into some cooler clothes, and headed out on my journey to the PX. When I left my tent it was sunny and quite hot. About ¼ of the way there I noticed it had cooled down…then I heard thunder…then I looked up and saw a very ominous looking cloud not too far off in the distance. We’ve had similar weather here and it just lightly sprinkled or nothing happened at all so I decided to keep going so that I could get my hangers. Well…about half way there the wind picked up and it really started to rain pretty hard. I looked behind me and couldn’t see anything (that is to say that all I could see was a huge wall of sand heading my way). The closest building to me was the DFAC so I ran in there and closed the door. About that time one of the employees was walking out to see what the weather looked like because the sound of the rain is amplified quite a bit in the DFAC tent. I told him that I narrowly escaped Beelzamud the demon of sand and rain and that I was seeking asylum in his establishment until it lost interest and went away. But he still had to look…they always have to look. He opened the door and it was swung out of his hand in a great gust of wind. There was so much sand and rain in the air that we couldn’t even see the across the street. I’m here to tell you right now…Afghani sand is not normal. Normal sand would have taken the hint from the rain and turned to mud and been too heavy to be carried by the wind…but not Afghani sand. I think it has become intelligent and devised some way to repel the water….perhaps through some chemical or mechanical means. I don’t know…I just know that there were way more of them than there were of me so I didn’t stay around to study them. But be warned…they’re out there, they’re intelligent, and they have the taste of human flesh… Anyway, after he wrestled the door back closed and let out a few military expletives we went inside the eating area to wait out the storm. While in there I enjoyed some vanilla soy milk…but that’s not really important. What is important is that after about 15 minutes the rain and wind and wind and hyper-intelligent sand stopped and I was able to proceed to the PX for my very much needed hangers. By now the scent of fresh rain was in the air, which was nice…unfortunately, it was accompanied by another, much less pleasant, odor. I finally made it to the PX about 5 minutes after I left the DFAC. I walked in and went straight to where the hangers normally would be. I say “normally would be” because they were sold out. So I left the PX thoroughly and completely defeated…my head hung low…a beaten man. But I vowed that one day…ONE DAY…I would have my hangers and that day the taste of victory will be on my tongue and I’ll probably do a little dance…I’m not sure about that part yet though.