You Might Be In The Army If...

• You think beer is one of the four basic food groups.
• You pronounce "sergeant" like "sarn't".
• You have a difficult time coming up with sentences you have not previously heard someone else utter.
• You think your whiny complaints are both new and insightful.
• Your monthly paycheck is smaller than the average welfare payment.
• Your life is lived only in the present with no thought of the future (kind of like children, dogs, and paramecium.)
• You think marriage is a part-time job and adultery a tag-team sport.
• You spend half of your day sitting on your bum waiting for:
  • orders
  • supplies and/or equipment
  • other inconsiderate people
• Your high-tech equipment looks like it was used against Mussolini.
• You have nothing better to do than to gossip about and backstab your fellow soldiers.
• You can wax and buff like a veteran janitor.
• You were a:
  • juvenile delinquent
  • hairdresser (females only)
  • college screw up
  • small towner from Hicksville, USA
  • Marine reject
• You can't spell or read aloud.
• You use acronyms in a social setting.
• Your average meal looks like it came out of the north end of a south-bound moose. (SPC Joseph Harris)
• The thought of buying a new pair of boots makes you perspire in excitement.
• You are able to say things like, "We must tactically maneuver these HMMWV's to the north side of the motor vehicle holding area at 0800 hours" with a straight face.
• You compulsively walk in step with your companions.
• You think Jean-Luc Picard needs a haircut.
• You think Beavis and Butthead are the funniest thing on television.
• You give your last four before ordering your Big Mac. (PFC Childs)
• You know every tattoo artist within a 20 mile radius by his or her first name.
• The sight of a nifty drawing makes you itch to call the above.
• You look at an approaching individual's collar or cap before you even glance at their face. (PFC Jedediah Easterbrook)
• You are familiar with every product Kiwi makes.
• You think "Hooah" might just be a real word.
• Your boss says things like,"You will be there and have fun. That's an order."
• You dream in OD Green.
• You climb out of your couch and salute when they play the National Anthem on TV.
• You spend half of your time feeling superior to civilians and the other half wishing you were one of them.
• The first words you learn in a foreign country are all variations on "beer" and "alcohol".
• All of your medical ills are solved with Motrin or Penicillin.
• The word "Gas" makes you reach for a mask instead of a Mylanta.
• It is faster to note the parts of your "company car" that DON'T leak than it is to count the parts that DO.
• There is more starch on your uniform than there is in your diet.
• You have to restrain yourself from spraying Niagara on your Fruit of the Looms.
• You cried when Mom called and told you that she threw away all your old GI Joe figures and comics.
• You were the product of a dysfunctional family that YOU thought was perfectly normal.
• It is nearly impossible for you to cheat on your income tax return.
• You have discovered that life can be narrowed down to three basic needs:
  • Sleep
  • Food
  • Excretion
• You are required by a federal regulation to pull your wool socks all the way up to your armpits.
• You must wait six months and fill out 5 separate forms to get toilet paper for your bathroom.
• You suspect that your uniform and boots could probably stand at attention without you in them.
• Your skull retains the shape of your BDU cap even after you've taken your headgear off.
• You must wait 2 months for a bonus to show up on your paycheck, but only 2 hours for a deduction to be taken.
• You spend an irrational amount of time wondering what everyone is saying about you when you leave the room.
• Your spare tire sits around your waistline, and not in your trunk.
• All of your paperwork must pass through about 10 middlemen, each one more anal retentive, absent-minded and obstructive than the next.
• You give your kids counseling statements for failing to clean their rooms.
• You know that "guidon" refers to a unit's flag, not an underarm deodorant.
• You turn on your headlights during the day and shut them off at night. (SPC Robert Scheffler)
• The troops at Valley Forge probably had better tents than you.
• MREs are no longer interesting innovations, but evil little instruments of torture to be avoided at all costs.
• You know what "Butterbar" means and revel in using it
• You're mental prowess is determined by your ability to walk and sing at the same time
• You can build your own satellite out of nothing more than
  • 1 Roll of hundred mile an hour tape
  • 2 garbage bags
  • 1 box of paper clips
  • 1 tent pole
• "Efficient" means using 10 soldiers to put up one wall map.
• You speak of the Air Force with equal parts envy and disdain.
• You still try to find ingenious ways to get to your email while living in a leaky tent in the middle of a forest.
• You actually succeed in accomplishing the above.
• You actually had to PAY someone to give you that Kojack hairdo at basic training. (PFC Sara Farrant)
• Everything you say is a potential EO complaint. (PFC Sara Farrant)
• A Burger King value meal is a gourmet treat. (PFC Sara Farrant)
• Promotions leave you with a bleeding forehead and collarbone.
• You can refuse a drug test, but will be legally punished for doing so.
• You can get kicked out of an oral interview/exam (ie board) for walking in the wrong way.
• You are 35 years old and still don't have a credit card.
• You learn you are deploying to Saudi from CNN two days before you hear it from your chain of command.
• You praise and bless the Port-a-Potty man regularly. (PFC Sara Farrant)
• You look like a walking, talking, camouflage garbage bag on rainy days.
• You are nicknamed things like "Chock Block", "Small Round", "Pogy Bait", or (of course) "Radar" (PFC Sara Farrant)
• Your vehicle looks dirtier after you've washed it than it did before you started
• You get stuff like "Walk the line" and "Stay Alert, Stay Alive" when playing Pictionary with your Army buddies (PFC Sara Farrant)
• You think camouflage works in urban settings. (PFC Sara Farrant)
• It takes 9 hours to get TO the site of your field exercise, but only 2 hours to make it BACK. (PFC Sara Farrant on Army Physics)
• The thought of your colleagues armed with live rounds fills you with equal amounts of fear and panic.
• You could not tell the difference between Communism and your daily life when you looked up the word in your copy of Webster's Illustrated Dictionary for Young Readers.
• Your chain of command arranges to televise the Super Bowl via satellite in the field--in order to avoid mass rioting.
• A sudden increase in your unit's budget makes you wonder if you should look into extra life insurance.
• You are required to obey the orders of a scrubby kid half your age who only wears BDUs now because his/her parents didn't want to pay for his/her college education.
• You tie yourself into grammatical knots when you try to engage in intellectual debate with others.
• You can admit to using any of the following words/phrases within the past month:
  • "hand-carry"
  • "re-up"
  • "AR-XXX"
  • "Hooah?!"
  • "PMCS"
  • "Sarn't"
  • "squared away"
  • "#*(@&! up!" (Fill in the expletive)
  • "double-time"
  • "mission"
• Your S-3 is TOO in love with Microsoft Power Point presentations--not to mention their own voices.
• You are permitted to use "deadly force", but prohibited from firing a few "warning shots" while on guard duty.
• Your daily cologne is known as "Diesel--For the Soldier in All of Us"
• Your living conditions in the field are better than the ones you put up with in the rear.
• The entire cast of "ER" couldn't make your (overstarched) summer uniform "breathe".
• You know that the "H" in the 7 Army Values really stands for "Hurry up and wait." (PFC McCubbin, 32d Sig Bn)
• You know what the acronym "ATFU" means. ("Ate The #@&# Up") (PFC McCubbin)
• All of your off-duty clothing has Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, FUBU, or JNCO embroidered, stencilled, or otherwise emblazoned upon it.
• (Males) You *know* that the female foreign nationals that hang around the barracks at your overseas duty station are only after an ID card, but you continue to chase them anyway.
• (Females) You are positively catty towards every new female that arrives in your unit if she is:
  • Single
  • Under the age of 40
  • More attractive than you are
  • Even slightly talented
  • Not overtly lesbian
• (Males) Most *American* women living close enough to military installations to recognize a servicemember when they see one would rather give their phone numbers to a migrant farm worker than to you.
• You wish they still served beer during lunch in the mess hall.
• Your kids put hospital corners on their Barbie doll beds.
• A squeeze pouch of MRE Jalepeno Cheese Spread is your idea of heaven.
• When relating the dialogue of an argument to your buddies, you are tempted to start it off with, "And I replied with a whole lot of anger..."
• You have polypro or Gortex everything.
• You brag about being on Percoset.
• Your promotion prospects hinge entirely on your ability to:
  • Run
  • Shoot at a sheet of paper
  • Answer a slew of nitpicky questions regarding some of the most boring topics known to man
  • Send your clothes to a dry cleaner

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