Checklists are the bane of military life. And none are more soul-draining than the “out processing” checklists. Notice the plural in that last word. Yes, that’s right. There’s more than one. The first one nearly destroys your will to live and the second one makes you angry that you are still alive after the first one. The third one throws you a curve ball and makes you think you are actually starting to make some progress, while the fourth annihilates that false hope and serves as the final straw. About a third of the way through the fourth one is when I normally snap, and end up getting arrested for criminal misconduct because I’m on the flight line frantically waving a piece of paper at the F-22′s taking off while screaming incoherently about dates, initials and “I’ve never even done any welding! Can’t I just N/A this?!”

But all of that isn’t the truly maddening part…

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Gather around children, tonight we’re going to talk about a couple of lessons you learn when you’ve had One of Those Days®. You know what I’m saying when I say One of Those Days®. I’m talking about like that time you decided to have a Soju and Bourbon breakfast and then, finding yourself out on the streets of Manila at 9am, you thought it would be hilarious to pretend that you were a Filipino transsexual prostitute… then that afternoon, as you were frantically shopping for mouthwash you find the only store that had any, and all they had is one bottle of Scope’s brand new flavor, “Sparkling Ball Sweat,” and you grab it at the same time as a real Filipino transsexual prostitute who kicks your ass in the ensuing fight and takes your wallet and the only bottle of mouthwash in Manila, and you end the day sobbing quietly in a back alley and bleeding from a large gash in your head that you got by hitting the edge of a dumpster when you passed out from the bout of howizer vomiting you had as a result of drinking your homemade mouthwash made from Pine-Sol, Splenda and melted shoe polish.  You thought the Splenda would take the edge off of the Pine-Sol, and it did, but it did nothing for the melted shoe polish.  Yeah. One of thooooose days…

Lesson 1: Be aware of subconscious annoyances.

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