AJ's Online Journal

My most embarassing moment.

It was the summer 1994. Tent theatre was in full swing. For those who don't know what Tent Theatre is.... it's ummm.... theatre in a tent. Great concept, huh? It was the only job I gratefully accepted 16 cents per hour to work my arse off working in the production scene shop. The only truly great thing about Tent Theatre was the get togethers every night after the shows. We had a great house 2 blocks from campus that we all called The Pit. A little red brick number with 5 bedrooms (if you count the flood proned 2 rooms in the basement). Needless to say we crammed A LOT of people in that house. But this isn't a story about Tent Theatre or all of the late night Georges runs, the 5:00am Dunkin Donuts runs (thats when the donuts are made), or even the many nights sitting in our living room with cold beers sweating our ass off in the Missouri summer. It's a story where I was forced to leave that youthful paradise for 2 weeks to serve my country. I know that sounds all cool and official but the truth be known... it was anything but. I had joined the Air National Guard two years prior to help pay for college. God knows that 16 cents per hour working Tent Theatre wasn't going to pay for all of those Dunkin Donuts!
Being in the National Guard basically enslaves you to work 2 days a month and 2 weeks a year. My mandatory 2 weeks in 1994 came in the middle of Tent Theatre when I was summoned to Keesler Air Force Base in beautiful, yet humid, Biloxi Mississippi. I really had no complaint about Biloxi itself. I had just turned 21 and in my spare time I could hit all of the river boats for some Black Jack. Meanwhile, in my not so free time, we were doing extensive military training exercises. I was a Munitions Systems Specialist. I basically went and hit all of the bombs with a hammer to see if they were duds or not. Actually, if true, that might have been more fun but alas it was way more boring. For safty reasons bombs and missiles are broken down and stored in several pieces. My job... take those pieces, put them together, and drive them out to be loaded onto the F-16's. So, in order to get "true" combat conditions for training we had to set up a mobile assembly line and process as many bombs as we could. Well, that sounds easy enough, but some General in an air conditioned office decided that it would be beneficial if we could do our chemical warfare training at the same time. Ok, first of all it's 100 degrees in Biloxi and we are already wearing typical Army jungle gear complete with jungle boots, camoflouge pants, brown issue t-shirt, and camoflouge long sleeved over shirt. To add chemical warfare gear meant putting on a charcoal lined pair of pants, jacket, and shoes over our existing pants, shirt, and shoes. To top the whole lovely ensemble off we had a gas mask that was reminescent of some sort of midevil torture device to keep you from breathing. After said and done we were wearing about 60 pounds of clothing (That was probaby 50% of my body weight back in those days). Trying to work in those conditions proved VERY difficult. People would pass out and have to be taken to the hospital. Don't get me wrong, the Air Force wasn't totally ruthless, we did get a 15 minute "break" every 45 minutes and by "break" I mean being able to sit down. It was during one of these "breaks" that my most embarassing moment happened.
All I remember is that I was sitting, trying to figure out the conversation that was going on among everyone else. Between the trash cans on our head and the amount of sweat that had pooled itself just inside my ears I couldn't really hear anything. At one point I just gave up and just focused on breathing and trying to convince myself that I was actually not that hot. I was picturing a cool refreshing swimming pool with a cold beer in my hand just kicking back watching all of the lovely ladies I had invited over and ooooh are they taking their tops off? Just then I was pulled out of my daydream with everyone standing around me asking, "Are you ok? AJ? ARE YOU OK?" Apparently they had included me in whatever conversation they had going on and when I didn't respond got alarmed. Maybe my brain was a bit fried, maybe I was just confused because I couldn't really hear what they were saying to me. Either way we are trained in times of emergency to halt all training and deal with the problem at hand. In this case it was me. I remember everyone taking their gas masks off and thinking to myself, "Oh good. We are done." The next thing I know I have 15 people taking my clothes off. Normally this might be a good thing, but apparently they thought I was on the verge of passing out. I guess I was a little slow to point out that maybe I was ok, but by that point they had stripped me down to my boxers and were pouring coolers of ice water all over my body. "Ahhhhhhhhhh....." I thought to myself. "That feels soooo good. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut? Ooooh, theres a nice breeze out. Feels so nice. Hmmm.... " I felt good but a bit perplexed. "Why do I feel a breeze on my penis?", I wondered. "I must be hanging out of my boxers!" Everyone was in the process of carrying me to the jeep to get me to the base hospital so I couldn't really use my arms to tuck myself back in. Just then I felt someone do it for me! Ok, it's one thing to be exposed to ALL of your co-workers, but then to have one tuck you back in is a whole other embarassment. I don't know if I was too busy worrying about all of the "poking fun" I would get when I returned or if I just fell asleep in comfort of not being in my uniform any longer but the trip to the hospital felt like 2 seconds. The doctors checked me out and sent notice to my commander that I was indeed severly dehydrated and I wouldn't be able to work for atleast 3 days. "Wow! If I had know it was that easy I would have passed out much earlier!", I thought to myself.
When I did return to work I was so worried that everyone was going to give me a hard time about the whole thing. In my mind, the comedy was going to be plentiful at my expense. Oddly enough though, I wasn't the one being made fun of. Everyone was making fun of two other people. One was a slightly skanky loud mouthed girl that kept saying, "I didn't think AJ would be that big. Did you?". The other was the closest friend I had in the Guard, Scott, who had tucked me back in. Luckily the jokes aimed at him were all in the lines of, "Helping serve your country. One penis at a time."
To this day, as embarassing as it was for me, I still wonder about being doused with cold water. How big could I have been? It was cold water! Her standards of big must have been very skewed. And more importantly, should I have thanked Scott for tucking me in? I don't think I ever did.
When I returned to The Pit and the Tent Theatre crew, I was informed of ALL the fun things I had missed in my absense. And amidst all of the stories of those 2 weeks I kept my embarassing moment secret. Well... until now that is.
So, in all good sport, what's your most embarassing moment?