Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Success: When I Can Count to 21 in the Shower!



In September of 2008, I got to be a member of the first class in the Live Fire Shoot House that opened on Fort Indiantown Gap.  For an entire week we trained to fight in a closed building and fired live ammo at targets just a few feet away.

Our instructor was a British Special Forces sergeant who was on the mission to free the hostages in Tehran and in Entebbe.  He told us about the raids and then said after each mission he came home in a blur of adrenaline.  When he finally got home he said he would be sure a mission was a success if he could, ". . .get in the shower and count to 21."

This was clearly an old joke, but I had never heard it before.  Today, I called the training sergeant to volunteer to grade the Fitness Test at next drill, since at my age, I do not have to take it anymore.  He was happy to have me volunteer, but then made a joke about my ability to count past 20.  I told him that, in fact, I could get in the shower and count to 21--a joke he heard so long ago he forgot about it.
Just thought I would share that joke with you.

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...