Photo by an Afghan brother-in-arms, blog post by John HoffIn the photo above, I am helping to man a guard tower on my Forward Operating Base. There have been two suicide car bomb attacks on this position in the last two years. Fortunately, no Americans were killed in either incident.
Meanwhile, one of my cars is parked behind my garage in North Minneapolis. Upon returning this week for some R&R leave on the beautiful Gulf Coast, I learned...
...somebody had stolen the car battery.
Of course, I should be upset about this but I could only laugh.
An old car battery was stolen while I was in Afghanistan? That's all? That's the worse thing that happened?
This theft happened during a period of time when the "anti-Johnny Northside" forces were particularly busy on their nasty little anti-blogs, saying stuff like, "John Hoff is away in Afghanistan. Somebody lives in his house while he is gone. Therefore, John is a slumlord and should be investigated. Blah and blah and did I mention blah?"
So I had to wonder if the "anti-Johnnies" were somehow involved in the car battery theft, particularly since I heard an unconfirmed rumor that Paul "Pamiko" Koenig is living in his luxury RV and going through terrible financial difficulties. I know from my own experience of living in a 1979 Shasta RV that those things kill batteries like batteries are going out of style.
Notwithstanding such speculation, I've decided that as far as my stolen battery is concerned...
I forgive whoever stole the battery. Clearly, this person was in desperate need.
Furthermore, I refuse to allow the pathetic theft of a car battery to mess with my "warrior Zen thing."
Wow, what an odd thing to steal. I guess they're expensive so maybe someone just couldn't afford to replace theirs. Any chance you have a car alarm and it was going off on its own? I would think they would have just disconnected it. I had someone on my block whose car would go off repeatedly every night, police wouldn't do anything. Believe me, I was REALLY tempted to cut the battery cable. I think the tornado took care of it, I haven't heard it since then. At least something good came out of that storm!
ReplyDeleteNo chance of that. I've never in my life owned a car with a working car alarm.
ReplyDeleteMegan Goodmundson sent me this. Funny.
ReplyDeleteBoudreaux, the smoothest-talking Cajun in the Louisiana National Guard, got called up to active duty. Boudreaux's first assignment was
in a military induction center.
Because he was a good talker, they assigned him the duty of advising new recruits about government benefits, especially the GI insurance to which they were entitled.
The officer in charge soon noticed that Boudreaux was getting a 99% sign-up rate for the more expensive supplemental form of GI insurance.
This was remarkable, because it cost these low-income recruits $30.00 per month for the higher coverage, compared to what the government was
already providing at no charge. The officer decided he'd sit in the back of the room at the next briefing and observe Boudreaux's sales pitch.
Boudreaux stood up before the latest group of inductees and said, "If you has da normal GI insurans an' you goes to Afghanistan an' gets
youself killed, da governmen' pays you beneficiary $20,000. If you takes out da supplemental insurans, which cost you only t'irty dollars
a mons, den da governmen' gots ta pay you beneficiary $200,000!
"Now," Boudreaux concluded, "which bunch you tink dey gonna send ta Afghanistan first?
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