$#!# civilians say to veterans
I found this video on Facebook this morning, and I recognized one of our buddies in it. So how many times have you heard these?
Category: Pointless blather
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Was it like, hot over there?
Lost it.
Heard some pretty fucking dumb ones back in the day. No Iraq related ones, thank God.
And FWIW, the kids as a general rule asked smarter questions than the adults. Go figure.
I got a variation on the “I went to college theme” once. My brother and I went to see his former USMC friend who owned an ice cream shop in a small, liberal, western Massachusetts town known for having 5 colleges. My brother asked the counter guy if the owner was around so we could talk shop. The counter guy explained to my brother that the owner couldn’t have been a Marine because he had a college degree. It went downhill after I outlined my CV and asked WTF his degrees were that allowed him to pour coffee for a living.
I had the IUD conversation one day…smh. I just couldn’t take it.
In 2004 when I would tell people I just got back from a deployment to Kosovo, people would ask what part of Iraq that was.
I do like how they couldn’t even do the ‘can I catch your PTSD’ without busting out laughing.
I’ve actually heard teachers/guidance counselors talk about the only people who couldn’t get into college join the military bullshit.
That usually stops when I tell them 1–where I went to college, 2–what the nuke pipeline entails, 3–that out of that class of 25-30 HS Math/Physics/Chem students, maybe 2 or 3 of them would qualify and make it through the nuke pipeline.
They usually didn’t like hearing that.
As a recruiter I get asked a lot of these all the time. I often get asked by high school kids if I’ve stabbed anyone. The college issue, though, is by far the most common thing talked about. Guidance counselors get credit based off of how many students they send to college, so naturally they’re going to send them in that direction. People usually give me a double take when I tell them I’m getting a college education at no cost to me. The DoD Tuition Assistance program is available for all services: $4500.00 per fiscal year toward education, plus over 4 thousand colleges, to incluse some reputable ones like Post University in Connecticut, that lower their tuition rates to about $250.00 per credit specifically for active duty and reserve military members, which is the max the DoD will pay per credit.
The one that gets me is, My dad’s cousin’s uncle’s grandson’s neighbor’s sister in law was in the Army too.
Guidance counselors get credit based off of how many students they send to college
And yet they never tell you how many STAY there, because they don’t track that.
And I’m fleet… Fleet dodging!
That’s the best thing I’ve seen this morning… heard most of that dumbstuff.
I was sitting in the recruiting office waiting to go to MEPS for the first time when a kid asked my recruiter if he’d ever killed anyone. Recruiter gave him a an eat shit look, but the kids mom was standing there and she actually ripped him a new one over it (pretty funny).
I asked my recruiter about it maybe a week later, he said he didn’t even remember it, said at least a dozen kids ask him that every time he goes to a high school.
That was pretty much every day of college, and the retards at the police academy (fellow recruits) never could understand why I would go to the VA over the PD approved doctors or the disability check and why I had more money than they did (barely making $30,000) so yeah, this speaks volumes.
The one I hear most often (and read here) is “Of course I support the troops. My grandfather was in World War II.”
And the one I heard on another forum several years back; “The recruiters tried to “get” me, but they discovered that I was too smart for the Army and they weren’t interested in me anymore.”
I have heard both, sad thing is, I probably know their granddad, I was the first GWOT Vet to join the VFW in the Northern VA area, and brought the average age down to 71 when I joined at 20 years old. Idk what happened to many in my generation, they just lack the common sense and testicular fortitude to do even the slightest thing to assist in the common defense of this country. It saddens me, that the Support the Troops stickers have nearly lost their meaning, I have two personal stakes in it again, cousins that I grew up with, and I might coldcock the next mouthbreather whoo says something stupid suck as this. On a side note, I am going to invest in VA Iraq War plates, I need ideas!!!!
Maybe you know my father. He was in the Army.
Some of these seems really goofy to me to believe anyone has actually said them…but, I try not to surround myself with stupidity on a daily basis. 😉 The “fuckin’ liberals” and “Dirka, dirka, dirka!” lines cracked me up though. I have had one person who apparently thought that once you joined the military, you knew EVERYBODY that also joined. So she was thinking I knew her dad and even served with him but couldn’t tell me one thing about his unit. I had a little kid ask me if I shot anyone once, but he was a kid so I passed it off as such.
The two that stick in my mind are 1) “Why would you ever want to do that (i.e., join one of the services because it was the only thing I ever wanted to do)?” and 2) “I wish I had joined…(looking wistfully off in the distance like that gives them credibility because they now “wish” they had joined even though they NEVER gave it a thought back in their high school days.”
Interestingly enough, in an informal self-conducted poll of my high school class (from which I graduated in the mid-80s), the service rate appears to be around 1 in 8 (including Reserve, NG, and active duty), which is pretty high I think. Yes, it was West Virginia.
Finally, all my 13-year old has wanted to do since he was 10 was be a Marine…
If your Granddad is VFW or Legion in Northern VA thats a maybe
@NH Sparky, that’s because they don’t want to tell you about how roughly 47% of students going for a 4 year degree fail to get that degree within 6 years, or how roughly half of the incoming freshmen will realize that college isn’t for them, isn’t what they want to do, isn’t feasible, and that there’s more to life than college, and they will then drop out within four months.
I still feel uncomfortable when people thank me for my service. My usual response is that I did it for my two daughters.
As far as most annoying: is the person who says they tried to join but couldn’t for some such medical reason.
When it comes to whether or not I shot anyone, I say I spent most of my time handing out soccer balls and MREs.
The most idiotic line of this type I ever personally experienced was what my boss told me when I notified them post-9/11 that I’d volunteered for recall to active duty: “I don’t understand why you felt you had to do that.”
The real pity? The same individual had previously served in uniform themselves.
Guess it takes all kinds.
Some of those phrases have gotten modified over time, but they’ve been around for decades.
Don’t forget “baby killer” aimed at any uniform.
My personal favorite is/was “Have you ever killed anyone?”
After the third or fourth time being asked my answer became “I sure hope so, I tried hard enough!”
Slight disclaimer: Gun Captain on 5 inch mount firing shore bomb.
“Thank you for your service”
I’m thinking “Where the f%$# were you when we only had 3 guys in the squads?”
My two favorites are when I tell someone that I was on Submarines and they say “You were in the Navy?”. I just look at them and say, “No… The Army… but it was a very progressive unit”
And when a kid asks me if I ever killed anyone I answer “Not today, but it’s early yet”. 🙂
Dirka Dirka Dirka.
Fucking Liberals.
LMFAO
It always irked me to no end when guidance counselors and educators would assume that I was more educated than my recruiters just because I was an officer despite the fact that many of my recruiters had their Masters (one had a doctorate in Psychology and was a 68X).
One classic one I got was from a DEP who decided not to ship because “he had better job opportunities come up”. First, I asked him one damn good reason why I should try to keep him in…after he studdered and tried to outsmart me (19 year old JUCO dropout vs. a 29-year old Captain with a EE degree…no contest), I then eviscerated his argument by bringing his recruiter in and asking her what her take home pay was…what she had been able to save up…and how many houses she had owned (E6 back in early 2008, before the market crashed). After he tried again and failed to convince me, I just put the form on the table and said “sign here, here, and here, and get out of my station). The Recruiter came walked up to me later with the biggest grin on her face and told me that I had made her day, that he was so upset (“who does he think he is, talking to me like that?”) because I didn’t grovel at his feet. She didn’t care about the loss at that point.
I thought this sucked and not very well done. At first I thought it was made by the snakes at IAVA so they could pat themselves on the back for “raising awareness”. But I just realized that it was just a shitty video.
The felt a more appropriate title was “Shit civilians think is funny to veterans, but actually more funny to civilians and most veterans just go, “ehh yeah, it’s happened but whatever, civilians are dumb” when they see the video, video”
@25, “Not today, but it’s early yet.” Classic! I’ll have to remember that one. 😀
Ray–there was the one time we heard screaming coming from the Reactor Compartment. We just answered a flank bell until it stopped….
Since I’m Viet Nam era, we got the “baby killers” from the hair heads. It’s kinda odd getting thanked 30 years after the fact. When it does happen I usually say, “Thank You Ma’am/Sir. I was just doing my duty”..
When I meet someone who served in the military, I talk about whatever is currently going on. Why should I assume that the person who served is more interesting (by asking them a lot of questions) than me or the topic du jour?
It’s just respectful to refrain from asking someone a lot of questions when you first meet them.
“America, FUCK YEAH!” , “fuckin liberals”, “dirka dirka”… that’s some funny shit!!! The rest can be translated from douche bag to english as “I wanna get throat punched or crotch kicked”
The eternally awkward “Thank you for your service”. My answer has always been “It was an honor and a privilege”.
Luck in Battle
@15
We have Iraq and Afghanistan plates here in Louisiana. I’m the only person I’ve ever seen with them, though. There are plenty of standard Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force plates, but few of these. Probably because you have to copy and mail a certified copy of your DD214 to Baton Rouge, then wait about a month for the plates to come in the mail. The standard branch of service vet ones are in stock at the parish office, so I guess folks usually just go with that one.
Here is an edited picture of my Iraq plate:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ls1z28chris/6317109623/in/photostream/lightbox/
I didn’t want my actual plate number to show, but I’ll go ahead and say I’m in the 400’s. So apparently these things aren’t extremely popular.
“What does Navy stand for anyways”? Coffee out my nose on that one. hahahaha
@35: I’m in North Carolina which has the largest military population active + retired in the country and my American Legion plate number is under 1,000. I think you have hit the nail on the head although the extra fee has something to do with it also.
“I love weed WAYYYY too much.” Four years spent as a recruiter, I can’t count how many times I heard variations of that statement from high school kids as to the reason they didn’t want to enlist.