Trust completely eroded after sergeant pretends to lose count of pushups
By Whiskey Fueled Tirade
FORT CARSON, Colo. – Pvt. Mason Young lost complete faith and trust in humanity after his squad leader, Sgt. Martin Bird, pretended to lose count during an in-cadence pushup session at PT this morning.
“What just happened?” a stunned Young asked the soldier next to him. “We clearly just did 10 pushups and he started us back at one again. Ten pushups— I mean, 20 if you think about it— gone as if they never happened.”
Young stared into the stadium lights overhead while doing flutter kicks on the damp early morning ground.
“If he would lie about something as trivial as pushups, what else would he lie to us about,” Young thought aloud. “I mean, are we even the best squad in the platoon like he always tells us?”
As the group formed back up, Young did his best to wipe the grass and snow from his back and PT pants.
“Was pretending to lose count just a metaphor?” Young asked his roommate as they walked back to the barracks. “I mean, is he trying to tell us that the idea of fitness is aspirational, a Sisyphean endeavor to be sought after, but never really achieved?”
“Or maybe he really did lose count. No, he knew what he was doing.”
In the chow hall line, Young continued to consider the morning’s events.
“Sure, on the surface it looks like a benign ruse, orchestrated to make us do more pushups and get stronger,” Young said to the specialist cooking his omelet. “Or maybe Sgt. Bird thought he was just being funny. But what are the moral implications of his deceit?”
“If 10 pushups can be so casually erased, what about a pair of night-vision goggles, a weapon, or a human being?”
Young had taken up vaping by work call formation and began ranting to anyone who made the mistake of making eye contact with him as they conducted police call around the company area.
“I suppose there must be some gradation between a few pushups, and say murder, but who draws those lines? You? Me? The first sergeant? What if life is just a meaningless continuum of random events to which we retroactively ascribe some sort of meaning in an endless cycle of self-deceit?
By close of business formation, sources say Young had nearly taken up heroin when he found salvation at the local CrossFit church.
Whiskey Fueled Tirade is an Army guy, distilled spirit consumer, and throw-away COA composter. Recommend your favorite whiskey to him on Twitter @FueledTirade