Drill Instructor Buddy

You can just call me D.I. Dawg for short. (But not for long! hee hee!) Today I get to role play--and to tell you about a joke that Mike and I pulled on his grandson, who's also named Mike and whose birthday is today.

It happens that this year the birthday boy is away from home at summer camp. Only it's not the kind of summer camp you see in the movies, where you can ride ponies and go canoeing and toast marshmallows and sing "Kumbaya" around a campfire. And you definitely can't swim across the lake at night to sneak into the girls' camp and maybe get waylaid by some deranged idiot wearing a hockey mask. (I think that last part's just as well, though, don't you?)

This summer camp is a month-long session of Air Force ROTC Field Training at Maxwell Air Force Base. There the psychos are just drill sergeants. M says young Mike is pretty nervous about it--not exactly what you'd call a "no-sweat cadet"--but thankful that it's the Air Force and not the Marine Corps.

So we got this idea to create a birthday card that was in keeping with the spirit of Cadet Mike's big adventure. We dug up some pictures of me wearing M's Marine utility cap. (He says a "Smokey the Bear" hat would have been more authentic, but you have to go with what you've got.) Then we wrote some snarky-sounding stuff that a Marine D.I. would probably say if you were in boot camp and he learned it was your birthday. We mailed it in plenty of time for young Mike to receive it by today. I hope that he and his comrades and especially their drill sergeants are finding it to be a real knee-slapper.

Here's a scan of the card's front page:

 And when you open it, this is what you see:

Pretty nifty, huh? Even though I helped make the thing up, M insisted on putting his own logo on the back. I didn't object too hard, since he took the pictures of me with his camera and he lets me blog on his computer--and especially since it at least has my name in it. So here's the logo M uses for his homemade greeting cards. He says the picture is an old one from when he lived in some town called South Park.

 

And that's what we've been up to for the past few days. No rest for the wicked!

Once again, happy birthday, Cadet Mike! Someday you'll look back at this and laugh.