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Nov. 12, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
57:48
The Richard Leonard Show: Military Downtime: How do They Spend it Differently Than Civilians?
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Welcome to my show.
Welcome to my show.
That brought up today's show topics.
And today, my good friend Jason and I, we're going to have a conversation about how veterans spend their time, their free time.
And I have a feeling that we could get way off into the weeds and this could be a five-hour show or a series of five or six shows.
So we're going to try to keep it condensed, but let's not waste any time.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome here to the next installment of The Richard Leonard Show.
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So, let's get started.
As I told you in the interview, or in the interview, I'm sorry, in the introduction today, Jason and I are going to have a conversation about how veterans spend their time.
And before I get into my short story, let's bring Jason on.
Jason, hello, sir.
How are you?
Very well.
And yourself?
I'm very good.
You're looking crystal clear today.
I love it.
And mind you, also, I would like to wish you a Happy Veterans Day yesterday.
And everybody else watching, if you know a veteran and you're not, and you didn't, please make sure to wish them a Happy Veterans Day.
It was yesterday.
So, Jason, Happy Veterans Day yesterday.
And to you too, sir.
Well, thank you very much.
So let's get started.
How veterans spend their time.
And let me just quickly go through this story.
And so as many people know, I sell parts at my local Harley Davidson dealership.
Earlier this summer we had a customer come in who was clearly inebriated along with his female companion who was also inebriated and after a short interaction they decided to leave the store They were very friendly, of course.
We had no problem with them at all, other than telling them, hey sir, you guys probably shouldn't ride your bike.
A couple of us offered them alternatives to getting to wherever it is they were trying to go, but of course they chose to not take our help.
They climbed on this motorcycle and took off on the parking lot at a high rate of speed.
The female fell off the back of this bike.
Clearly, she wasn't feeling so hot.
But the guy took off, kept going.
Never stopped, never came back.
One of our other employees called 911 to get her some help.
And so it went on from there.
And later on in the afternoon, we were having a conversation about this at the parts counter.
And one of our regular customers who comes in often, good guy, good to talk to, overheard us talking.
And his first question to us was, well, was that guy a veteran?
And it kind of threw me for a loop for a second.
And I said, well, what do you mean by that?
He goes, I'm not trying to insinuate that all veterans are drunks or they drink to excess all the time.
He said, but isn't like adrenaline junkie something that goes along with being a veteran?
And I said, well, sure, I guess.
I mean, people have defined it that way.
And so the conversation rolled on from there.
And so Jason and I were having this very conversation a day or two ago and decided, well, maybe we should talk about this on the show.
So, Jason, I've ate up all your time so far.
What...
How would you have reacted?
If you were standing there and the guy says, hey, was that guy a veteran?
Aren't you guys all adrenaline junkies?
He wasn't trying to be offensive.
He didn't mean any harm.
But I guess I've known that people see us that way, but I guess I've never really been asked that.
How would you have answered that question?
It would have been super simple.
I just said probably.
Okay.
All right.
So are you insinuating that Adrenaline Junkie is a stereotype that can be filed under United States military veteran?
Well...
I certainly can't say that it isn't.
You know, I think more than the adrenaline junkie, it's kind of risk-adverse behavior, right?
Because it was clear.
Was it really adrenaline junkie?
Is an adrenaline junkie somebody that, you know, does wheelies, stands on the back of their bike, and goes hands-free, arms out like they're on the cross, down 94?
That's an adrenaline junkie to me.
Somebody who's...
A little liquored up, hops on like Ricky, whiskey rips it, and the old lady falls off.
That's somebody that's just making a ton of bad decisions in a very short period of time.
That's risky first behavior.
So that's where I roll back to, it absolutely could be a veteran.
You know, that's not outside the context of probability.
Okay.
So would you say that it would be a fair assessment for a civilian, I suppose we could say, to assume that risk-adverse behavior is something that...
Veterans partake in daily, very often.
And do you think that this risk-adverse behavior...
First of all, let's define risk-adverse behavior.
Because I feel like there's so many avenues that you can go down...
I mean, my first instinct when somebody says risk-adverse behavior is, you know, crazy things like you said, riding your bike with no hands, standing on the back pegs down the highway.
It could be, you know, like this insane, crazy quest for, you know, like multiple sexual partners.
It could be drinking to excess.
It could be drugs.
It could be Base jumping, it could be whatever.
I mean, I think all of those things fit in there.
But also, small things that we may not think about, like poor financial decisions, might also fit in there, right?
Right.
Yeah, well, I think it's, and again, this is not speaking generally that all veterans are like this, but I think these behaviors come up with greater frequency in our culture, in our population.
I certainly think as you go through the hierarchy of the military, certainly these risk adverse behaviors are lessened by exposure, but I would think if you're looking at You know, company level NCOs and company grade officers probably have a higher percentage of this.
And then as you go down further and further, and as my wife explained to me, when we talk about these things, we have to talk about what these acronyms are.
So I'm going to go back and basically the youngest, least experienced people that spend the most time in country or in these situations probably have an imprint of this with more frequency than those who have not or have had higher pay rates.
So that's what I was talking about before.
So, you know, risk adverse behavior just means regardless of the outcome, if it's risky or not, that does not have a big factor in your choice to engage in that activity.
So, you know, I mean, it's like going to a roulette table with the last 50 bucks you've got in your pocket, knowing you, you know, to quote Mike Lindell, you need 85 bucks to get on that bus to get home, and you still put 50 on red.
You don't have a plan.
There's nothing when that 50 bucks is gone.
Like, you know, you're rolling Nike, or you got your go fast on, and you're going to go hump at home.
That's risk-adverse behavior.
It doesn't need to be hammered drunk on a bike.
It's the old lady flying off the back, which is still just an amazing picture in my mind.
Well, I'll tell you.
It was something.
I couldn't believe it.
So, let me ask you.
Yeah.
Why?
Why do you think...
That veterans may be more prone to activities that are going to put them in a tough spot.
So, like, not only physically or mentally, but also financially, you know, with our relationships and things like that.
I mean, I think it's easy for us to point out what these stereotypes could be or what these behaviors are.
Maybe we should talk about why.
Why is it that we may be more likely than a tow truck driver to partake in some of these things?
Yeah.
You know, and I've thought about it, and it's, you know, I think in a lot of situations with veterans, you know, when you've had to face your mortality, and that doesn't mean that it was an imminent threat.
This isn't, you know, I'm not just talking to people that have been in active combat, face-to-face with an enemy combatant, kill or be killed.
It's when people get put into a situation where that is something that has a possibility of occurring, right?
Mm-hmm.
So it's not like going to a rough neighborhood.
You know, those things can be, you know, a little troubling.
You're going into situations where if you're on patrol and, God willing, nothing really happened, you still have that whole buildup mechanism, the thing that you go through to get in that vehicle, to go on that convoy, Going into an area where you know the route was hit within the last week, the last day, the last six hours, and it changes how you think about things.
And I think with time, as people leave, you know, you get away from some of those patterns of thinking.
But I think when you're comfortable knowing there's no bullets flying, there's no babies dying, I can get a little risk here.
I don't really have to pay attention to, you know, three weeks from now, three hours from now, three years from now.
F it.
I'm just going for it.
And I think that's the thing that we see.
Well, you bring up a really good point because I think that a lot of people...
A lot of civilians and maybe even a lot of folks that served and maybe never had the opportunity to deploy.
What they don't understand is that you are, before you even leave the United States of America, you are forced to face your mortality.
Whenever you're deploying to a forward area, and the way that they do that is, for example, you go take a DOD picture, right?
So you get an address uniform.
If you're an NCO or above, if you're below, they just use whatever picture they took of you at basic training when they just flow bead your hair and made you put on some cap that 9,000 other people put on before you.
I'd snap a picture of you looking surprised because you don't know what the hell you just did.
But anyway, you take your picture and then you're forced to write your obituary.
And I can remember that they just give you this worksheet, right?
And it has the instructions.
It says, basically, what it says is, should you die...
This is what we're going to print about you.
This is the story we're going to tell about you.
This is the words from the nation, from the United States that is going to be put out about you, and they have you write it.
So who are you leaving behind?
All that stuff.
And so now you have to think about that before you even get on the plane to go.
And then...
We get all these things that you just talked about, right?
Your intel briefs.
When was the route last hit?
Did you lose any buddies last night because it was your night off?
I mean, all this stuff.
The whole experience is a complete mind screw.
On top of if you've been actively engaged in combat.
You were going to say something.
Go ahead.
They made you guys write your own obit.
Absolutely.
When we were at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, it was part of the paperwork we did.
It was a packet of paperwork they gave us.
For real?
Yes.
Okay, now what year, where were your deployment cycles?
Were they what years?
05 to 07 we did Iraq and 11 to 12 to Arifjan, Kuwait.
And we were the brigade along with a few others that closed out Iraq.
So I think the Red Bulls were one of the last units in Iraq to close it out and officially, in quotes, end the war.
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And then 7, 8.
I never had to write an obituary.
So I was trying to figure out where that one came in.
Obviously, everybody doing the will wasn't, you know, that's terribly different from a normal person.
But I think for a 20-year-old kid, you know, or an 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school, you don't have to write your will if you're not mobilizing.
So when you're going through those mobilization, what do they call those things?
SRPs?
Modray.
Oh yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
I'm probably all wrong.
Please correct when you guys hear that.
But going through that, that was the first time I think a lot of people had seen a will with folks I deployed with.
Like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, I don't know, Will stuff, you know, same shit I did before.
But to a lot of people, that was a big, you know, right in their face.
You know, that was the beginning of it.
And then, of course, you know, things went on to obviously become different and become active in a different place.
So that just stirred up another thing.
But that obituary thing kind of got me off guard again.
Well, maybe that was just a brigade thing, maybe it was a battalion thing, but I can remember all of us kind of sitting in our barracks thinking, well, I have no idea what to put on this paper.
You go through and you list your family members, where you're from.
I think we put what year we graduated high school.
I think I wrote on mine that I got academically suspended from college.
You know, I mean, I don't know.
What do you write on there?
This is the biggest mind F I've ever thought about.
Absolutely.
I want to do this in my company.
Be like, hey, we're going to take a Friday afternoon.
I want you guys to write an obituary about yourselves.
What are you talking about?
And mind you, sir, mind you, that we had like one day.
Hey, after closing formation, hey, we have this paperwork.
Make sure you grab it, fill it out, and get it back to your platoon sergeant so they can get it to the S-1, the HR people.
And it was one day, and so it took us hours.
I mean, imagine being 22, 23, 19 years old, and someone just handing you a piece of paper and telling you, basically, if you die, whatever you write on here is what we're going to put in the paper.
I don't know.
That one is odd to me.
It's cool.
It's really cool, yeah.
Understanding the psychology behind how that could impact people would be something that I would think about before I would even think about handing that.
What are you talking about?
Why are you steering this in this direction?
I mean, mortality in that situation is obviously something you need to be aware of, but if you're looking at instilling confidence, people's psyche is something that needs to remain confident to be effective.
So just the whole idea like, oh, by the way, quite frankly, once I'm dead, chuck me in the ditch.
It's over.
The old bit, I'm hopeful that somebody that likes me writes it, but I don't want to be an active participant in my own obituary.
I did enough dumb stuff to get me into that box.
Let's let somebody else handle that.
Well, and I'll tell you, once you get over the initial idea and shock of it, if you will, It kind of put things into perspective, right?
And so for us as a team, it took us a couple days to kind of get over it.
But then the conversation changed to, well, I guess this is the real thing, right?
And so then you start to mentally prepare yourself for the shit show that you're about to enter into.
And you kind of have to, I think we've talked about it before, I don't know if it was you and I or not, but on the show we've talked about how it is essential that you kind of make your piece with the idea that this may be it, right?
And you kind of have to process it a little bit, because in the moment there's no time to think about it.
Right.
Well, see, because I go the other way with it.
Like, I appreciate what you just said.
Fully understand it.
See, mine would have gone to the human.
You know, I'm literally writing that obituary right now in my mind.
And if it would have been at that time, Jason, 27 years old, you know, remembered by both women that he had been with.
Maybe.
The full half tank of gas that I have in my broken POS back home.
Boy, there's not a lot.
I would have definitely written a very humorous obituary.
Yeah.
But that's where my mind went right away.
Maybe it could have been spun into a positive thing, but I think that, again, gets back to why there's stereotypes.
Because we are...
I would say veterans are more likely to share experiences with civilians and veterans alike that most normal people...
Again, I always say normal people, and I hope I don't offend anybody when I say that, but I mean, typical civilians...
Normal Americans who have not served rarely wouldn't speak about the things that you and I talk about openly.
Right.
And and I think that sometimes that's a bit of a shock in how we present ourselves, because you know what, at the end of the day, I'm not in imminent danger.
There's nothing here that can really hurt me.
And certainly, your feelings about who I am is probably not going to hurt me either.
So, here I am.
This is me.
This is what I do.
Like it, love it, or leave it.
Either way, I'm here and here it comes.
And so, maybe some of these stereotypes are just based upon the fact that veterans are more realistic with who they are and they're comfortable with who they are and they're willing to put that out for everybody to see.
Well, I think it comes down to that serving in the military in general is a life experience unlike anything else.
But serving in the military in a forward area and having to Mentally prepare yourself or mentally process the things that are going on, whether you're actively engaged in combat or not, is a completely different thing.
And so I think it takes you to a place, and if my wife were here right now on this show, she would tell you that I am an extremely black and white person, for example.
I seem to think that I have this little courtyard of gray in there somewhere.
But according to her, it's black and white.
But I think that you kind of end up just becoming there because you learn through the process of your service that Depending on what it is that you do and what you see and what you witness and what you feel and how you come out of it on the back end, there really isn't a whole lot other things to be able to make sense to you.
There isn't a whole lot of things for me that have three options.
When it comes down to life choices, Either, like, let's just say a normal job, for example, right?
Either you go to work, and you put forth the most effort and best effort you can, or you don't.
And if you don't, that's okay, because somebody else will, and that employer will be happy to pay somebody else who's going to put in the effort and be there on time and do all those things.
It's black and white.
Now, I understand that there's a gray area in there somewhere.
I mean, sometimes people have challenges or they're going through life struggles or whatever the case may be.
There's different case-by-case things that arise, but generally...
It's this or that.
And so for people like my wife, and I love her dearly, there's black and white and magenta and purple and pink and blue and yellow and orange.
I mean, one of these things on your phone, six million, five hundred million colors, you can make these LEDs.
Well, my wife sometimes has five million color goggles on.
And so there's conflict there sometimes, and we always get over it, of course, but I think that those are the types of things that maybe people like you, Jason, and myself, and a lot of other veterans, that's kind of where you end up.
Because through your experience, you see.
You end up in these situations, well, if I don't pull this trigger, I'm dead.
If I don't move this vehicle, we're all dead.
There's no gray area there.
And so we have to stop and either do one thing or the other and don't think about it.
Right.
Well, I think, you know, that's an interesting point because it does, it comes up around my household.
And I've often thought about it and it's kind of come up with, I think now in my head, you know, when I can tell I'm doing something that I know My wife doesn't want me to do, not specifically in action, but if I'm delayed on something she thinks is important, veterans are really good at understanding.
If there's three different things that need to happen, I know what the five meter target is, I know what the 25 meter target is, and I know what the 100 meter target is, right?
Now, in my house, sometime, because the 100 meter target is the only meter, the only target that's on my wife's, or in between her left and right limits, which I always like to say, right?
It's the most important target, but I'm looking at the 5 and 25, and I'm like, nope, this one first, this one, and then this one.
I'm not diminishing it, but this is just the way that it is for me, and yes, you're on the list.
That's coming, but these two things are happening first.
And I think that's one of those things, too.
You know, people don't often understand.
I love our veteran culture.
I love our community.
Opportunities to work with other veteran-owned businesses, opportunity to work with other veterans, like in the field, you know, actually working with our hands, creating, building houses, doing whatever, running equipment.
I love being around veterans, but Do you know the storyline that I hear from people that aren't military?
That work for your own business guys?
I can't wait to hear it.
Holy cow!
Are such a pain in the ass!
Because we start a very specific way.
We see the things as they need to occur.
It's kind of the way that we've done things for always and we continually do it.
Now we're never wrong.
You know, there's a million different ways to build a one foot by one foot box with wood, right?
And so it's, you know, how do we do it?
But I've noticed that when I work with other veteran-owned business owners, we speak and we travel on the same wavelength that normal contract business owners don't have.
And it's just funny how frequently that comes up.
We're like, yeah, those guys are hot, but, you know, they just show up, they push dirt, nobody's talking, they talk, they do their thing, they disappear, and the job's done, and they're like in the wind.
And I'm like, yeah, that's what you want to hire, right?
Like, that's why I love veterans.
That's the thing.
That's the most endearing part.
And they're not necessarily not team players.
They just come in and they know their five-meter target.
They're here on your job site to move dirt, dig a hole, create footings.
Hey, it's cool.
You want to talk to them about the project?
That's their project.
That's their five-meter target.
And then they're on to the next.
Like, I love that.
It's get in, get out, get gone, get paid.
Wonderful.
And a lot of people have a hard time with that.
But for me, it's one of the more endearing weirdnesses of we as veterans.
Well, and maybe there's some continuity in it for veterans, right?
Like, every day is going to be the same but different, right?
Like, we know the process.
If we're going to go do this, all right, we're going to show up, we're going to get our equipment, we're going to dig the hole, we're going to move the dirt, we're going to put it here, we're going to put our equipment away, we're going to clean up, we're going to go.
And the process is the same everywhere you go, but the job is different.
The location is different, but the job is the same everywhere you go.
Yikes.
This is a perfect time for me to untangle my tongue while we take a break.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back.
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Hey folks, welcome back here to the second segment of the show.
We're just going to continue on.
Jason, I want to stick with the theme of the show when we were talking about how veterans may spend their time and...
How and if it is different at all than what civilians may do, just to kind of maybe bring some understanding to the civilian population about the differences between us and them, if there is any.
And so I'd like to ask you this question.
If the universe was gracious enough to grant you an afternoon with nothing scheduled, Your kids are busy.
Your wife's at the sewing club or whatever it is she likes to do with the other wives in the neighborhood.
And you have absolutely nothing to do.
No work, no business, no kids, no wife, no parents, no nothing.
Just your own time.
What is it that you would do with it?
And so I'll tell you, for me, there's a couple different things.
One of them, of course, would be to get on my motorcycle and get lost.
Maybe find a place to grab lunch or just ride until I need gas and then ride some more and then find a way to get lost and then turn on my GPS if I need to to get home.
But also, sometimes, it's absolutely nothing.
Sometimes when I have nothing to do, nothing planned, nothing scheduled, my wife is busy with work or, you know, taking care of one of her parents or she's off with her girlfriends hiking or whatever it is that they like to do.
They like to hike, which I don't understand anymore.
Sometimes my plan is to do absolutely nothing.
And that kind of brings me some peace, some time to unwind.
I like to tell people that I am an extroverted introvert.
And I really find value in being able to, like, at home go into my man cave, shut the door, and prepare for the next show, watch some other shows, watch some TV, whatever it is.
But just have no plan.
Having nothing to do and no plan, to me, sometimes seems like an amazing way to spend a few hours and recharge the batteries.
What about you?
You know, it's weird, you know, and you hit on it when you just said nothing.
But I try to think about it, you know, is it because I'm a middle-aged man with young children and a busy life where I want nothing?
And so as you've been talking, I was trying to go back to, you know, maybe a less busy time in my life.
And trying to think about what I did to kind of break the monotony when I was given those opportunities.
And weirdly enough, the more and more I think back, When I had those moments, and they weren't afternoons, they were days, weekends, et cetera, because I didn't, my life wasn't that busy.
I really spent a lot of time going out and chatting with the core group of veteran buddies of mine, of which is a very small group.
You know, there's probably four of us that actively stay in touch.
And obviously, it gets harder and harder as we get older and our lives get busier.
But at that time, I would take the time to go make those hours, sometimes half-day drives, full-day drives, to just go hang out and, again, do some weird shit.
Maybe shoot guns on the farm.
And just walk around.
And actually, it was spending time with those dudes.
That was my thing.
It didn't matter what we did.
We could have been sitting around and watching a football game or just talking about whatever dumb crap we had done that week.
That was it, man.
That was my peaceful break.
And then it was back to reality again.
And so it's weird when you made me think about it.
I very fondly look back at that time and I don't get to do that as much as I used to.
I miss it.
Do you think that Of course, not everybody has the ability to go and hang out with the people they served with, right?
Because not everybody served.
But finding connections with friends and people that you were close to in the past and probably still are or would like to still be, do you think that those things are different than...
What civilians would do with their free time.
I would like to think that the things that I find calm me and relax me aren't a whole lot different than what the guy that lives across the street from me.
Depending on who you are.
Some people can't sit still.
They've got to be busy all the time and they find comfort in yard work or they find comfort in building tree houses or whatever the hell it is that they want to do.
But whatever your thing is, I would like to think that it's not that much different than what everybody else does.
I mean, we're not a whole lot different in that respect.
And so the whole point of this question that I posed to you was to hopefully bring some clarity to the fact that we're not so different, that there's no similarities between our community and the veteran community and the civilian community.
Because at the end of the day, We're all just people who have had enough of all the bullshit going on around us.
And we all just need to find a way.
And maybe if more people took time to just chill out for a little bit.
We wouldn't be as polarized as we are now.
We wouldn't be as upset with the people next to us in traffic.
Hopefully there is a way for us to be able to find a way back to where we were at 10 years ago, 8 years ago.
When you can have those leisurely drives to work, right, and be relaxed instead of having to be on edge all the time or pissed off about what was on the news this morning or last night or whatever the case may be.
I don't know.
I would just like to think that there are some pretty vast differences between our culture and the civilian culture, but there's also some similarities there.
Would you agree?
100%.
I think more so, the way that I was thinking about what I was talking about was that kinship, that bond.
For other people, I've asked them, do you have a best friend that you've known since you were a young kid, maybe in elementary school, and now you're 30 years old?
A lot of people have that, right?
They have that one person where...
I don't need to talk to that person day in and day out.
I can go a month, six months, even a year.
And when I call them, it's the same phone call, if that makes sense.
Pick up right where you left off.
Pick up right where you left off.
No harm, no foul.
Hey man, life gets busy.
Here we are.
But you also have a lot of friends.
If you did that too, you're not active with them.
You know what I mean?
You're not participating in that kinship, that friendship.
I think a lot of people are like, oh man, that guy's just blowing me off or doing this or I'm just not a boy.
You know what I mean?
There's that.
And I think that brotherhood I think a normal civilian can relate to it, because everybody has that one type of person.
But we're blessed in some instances with having multiples of those people.
And that's the thing, is being around them, not even what we're doing.
It's not an activity.
Like I was saying, watching a thing, doing whatever, doing whatever.
Just being around that person kind of brings down my energy level, gives me a chance to break from the bullshit.
And now it's mainly phone calls because now, you know, if you gave me that half a day right now, Richie, dude, I'm just going to walk around the house naked like nobody's going to...
Talk to me.
I don't have to make anybody a sandwich.
I'm not cleaning up some toys that I just, like, it would be pretty dope.
It would just be some, like, bonafide me time.
But I think that would be the thing that I would sit there and be like, like, that was cool.
I got that.
But I'd much rather have that thing again.
Like, reach out and do it.
Yeah, I definitely agree that spending that time with people that you served with or even people that have served that you didn't necessarily serve with but you can find common ground with.
And even if you stand around and do nothing, for some reason...
It just brings you calm.
It brings you peace.
And maybe it's just the idea that you are in a place Right.
Right.
There's no, there's no reason to like air your dirty laundry if you don't want to, but just knowing that you're just in a place with, with folks and, and furthermore, furthermore, if you're in a place and shit hits the fan, you know, you're good, right?
If you're with your boys.
Because, like, we talk about it at the Harley shop all the time, right?
Like, if somebody wants to come in here and start acting a fool, they're gonna realize it was a big mistake pretty fast.
Because the group of people that work in that shop are all pretty close.
There's not a lot of us, and most everybody's been there for a long time, and they're pretty tight.
And so, you know, it's kind of that thing, like I was explaining, I don't think you were on the show that day, but when I was explaining how...
Military folks, you know, like we all have that one guy who's kind of our dummy or our idiot or our dippity doo.
Yeah, let an outsider come in and start picking on our idiot.
And then we all swarm that person and we berate them or whoop the shit out of them or whatever you want to call it.
Because you're not going to pick on him.
He's our idiot.
We'll pick on him.
But we're also going to take care of him.
We're going to look out after him.
And so that brings you this calm, this peace.
Um, and, and so I agree with you a thousand percent.
Like, you know, you and I could probably stand in your garage or my garage and not say a word to each other and just play with toys or flamethrowers or guns or whatever.
And, and, and we'd be good, right?
Be comfortable, be fine.
No problems at all.
How many times has that happened where you and I are doing just that thing and all of a sudden we glance down at our phone and it's, you know, four hours have passed.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm like, bro, you just got here.
And then my wife is looking at me like, is your bromance over for the night?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, but you know what?
I'll tell you, since we're on the topic, those are the things that Make me extremely happy that I chose to serve in the military because those are the types of things that unfortunately make us a little bit different from the civilian population because not a lot of people have that.
I think you only get that in places like...
I would say that I had similar relationships like that with the dudes I played football with for 12 years of my childhood.
But of course now we're all adults and kids and marriage and jobs and this and that and the other things.
So like life happens.
And so when you grow up it changes.
But now that you're adults and we've all been through this experience either together or not.
That is completely life-altering.
Completely different than playing sports or Boy Scouts or whatever it is that we did as kids with other groups of kids.
This is different.
And the bond that you make is completely...
Like the guys that I go prairie dog hunting with every year, I see them once a year.
We talk maybe three times a year, including that week we go prairie dog hunting.
And it's like we're back in Iraq with each other again.
Playing the same grab-ass games.
We just have gray hair now.
You know?
And we were kids back then.
Go ahead.
Before you go crazy, I want to know, what was your grab-ass games?
Like, what was your favorite one?
What's one that comes to mind that you do?
Because I think this would be funny to talk about right here.
There's two of them that stick out in my mind the most.
One of them was...
So, do you remember when we were deployed and every base had a bazaar, right?
So there was a place where locals could come and sell soldiers their stuff.
So you got pirated DVDs and you got prescription medication that probably wasn't what they said it was, but they charged you out the nose for it and all kinds of things like that.
We were in Baghdad at BIOP, Baghdad International Airport.
We went to the bazaar and we didn't have enough cash individually but collectively collected enough change to buy this little flashlight stun gun.
And, man, this guy, he would be really pissed if he knew us.
I won't use his name.
Okay.
And so we thought, when we were waiting to leave that night to come back south and return home, where our home base was, we got delayed.
We were waiting three or four hours.
And so we thought, well, we got this stun gun, and we haven't stunned anybody with it yet.
So who's going to take it?
Like, somebody has to.
We charged it all day.
Somebody's got to take a rip from this thing.
And one lonely soul said, well, I'll do it if the pot's big enough.
Okay, well, I guess if we're going to put a pot together, there has to be stipulations.
And so at the end of the day, to make a long story short, what happened was we got together $50 from us and then the group next to us.
It was a different company, a completely different unit.
But, you know, we were all stuck there together.
So we told these guys, hey, we're going to do this.
You want in?
He wants $50 to do it.
And so it was just crazy enough.
And what we did was...
This guy chose to, for $50, take the stun gun right to his bare scrotum.
And I gotta tell you, it was quite entertaining.
It wasn't much of a game, but it was entertaining.
And it was entertaining for about four minutes.
Okay.
And he took it twice.
And somehow he thought if he took it again, he'd get another $50.
So then that was the end of the game.
But the second one was that we used to take the axe handle from our pioneer kit of our truck.
And we had a plethora of chem lights, those little lights you snap.
We played baseball with those in the dark.
You cut them open a little bit, you pitch them and you hit them and when you hit it with the thing, the juice goes everywhere and then the whole parking lot was glowing and we all looked like a bunch of idiots when it was time to go.
What I didn't take into account was that now I'm going to be in the turret of this Humvee behind a gun going down the road in the pitch dark and my whole face is glowing yellow from chemlight juice.
So those are just a couple of the dumb things that we did.
Okay.
Nice.
Your turn.
We got about seven and a half minutes left, so you got time.
There's going to be people listening that are going to know exactly what I'm talking about when I say this.
Perfect.
I was a prime inventor of games, and so one of the prides of the fleet was, good dunk, you pocket.
Now, gedunkapocket, it's nonsense.
It's really not gedunkapocket.
It's not a phrase.
It's nothing.
It's not a game.
I made it up.
And it's where you take a lit cigarette that you're smoking, and you have to slide it into one of your buddy's pockets.
Still lit?
Still, it's gotta be lit, right?
So, this is where it becomes the choice.
You know, the first time that it happens to you, you overreact, you jam your hand in your pocket, now you burn your hand, you burn your leg, you burn everything.
But you have to be calm when you're doing it because you can feel the pain on your leg.
And once people have played get dunked pocket enough, you know that you can retrieve said cigarette butt and keep this thing going without burning yourself too terribly bad.
And it just gets worse and worse.
And I could still, there's dudes that I still, when I see them, weep.
I always am watching because remember how those old trousers used to have that little 90 degree flap that came open?
Dude, that was like the perfect cigarette butt funnel.
And so you could hit somebody from like four feet away with a Gedunka pocket and it takes about 20 seconds to Until you get those trousers to light on fire and the real pain train is coming.
And by the time it's there, it's down the tracks.
You're going to be hurting.
You're slamming it.
And then it's a game we still play.
So, Kadunka Pocket.
Folks, I'd like for you to be on the lookout at some point in the future because there will be a Kadunka Pocket t-shirt coming.
Yeah.
And it'll be a picture of a hand holding a cigarette butt, ready to pitch it into a pocket.
That's amazing.
But see, here's the thing.
Now, I bet that folks were pretty pissed off the first time.
They burned their legs, they burned a hole in their pocket, they burned their fingers.
But it's something that brought you guys close together, like you just mentioned.
There's going to be people watching this that know exactly what you're talking about, and I imagine by this point now, they're still smiling about it.
Oh, still, it comes through on, like, every once in a while, probably that every two-year, every three-year text chain with the five of us, it'll just say, G.P. And I'll be like, oh damn, who saw me where?
Like, who's going to get me?
Like, I'm still in defense mode 20 years later, knowing that these guys might know where I am.
Because I couldn't imagine doing this with my coworkers now.
Or, you know, when I was in corporate America and we're out in the parking lot, you know, I'm going to go hit one of these junior executives with a cigarette in their pocket.
Like, I'd be in the streets.
And all these guys got holes burned in their silk suit trousers.
You know, you get super cool and smart, and you cut out the Nomex glove, and you put a Nomex glove inside of your pocket, depending upon who was around you.
And then that Nomex would just, the thing would go out pretty harmlessly.
But yeah, anyway, you dunk in pocket.
Well, so here, this is a prime example of the things that we do as a culture that And if there was a way, and maybe there is, and I'm just not a brainiac and able to figure it out, but there was a way to understand the mind of a soldier or a veteran.
Because I would imagine as you're telling the story, there are going to be people watching this that hear both of our stories and go, well, that's not funny at all.
100%.
But then there's going to be another group of people that are going to be like, well, it wasn't that game, it was this game.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so here's the perfect opportunity, bro, to invite anybody watching or listening to include in the comments below what your dumbass grab-butt story was when you were in the military.
Because there's so many of them.
And we are pretty much unedited.
But if this wasn't more of a family show, we could keep going down this road and it could probably get pretty weird pretty quick.
But we'll refrain.
That's a whole other time and show and platform maybe.
Who knows?
But here's the thing, man.
Seriously.
These are the experiences that we had and that we continue to have to this day that define who we are and how we see the world and how we process the things going on around us.
And I think that conversations like the one that you and I just had are important for...
That understanding and bridging that gap.
Part of the whole goal of me deciding to start this show some 86 weeks ago was to be able to start to bridge that gap between us and the civilian culture.
And I don't like to make it sound like it's something where I think that we're at odds with each other, but I think that there is a gap there.
And when some things happen, or you hear conversations, or maybe you work with a veteran or a military member, and some weird shit comes out of their mouth every now and then, or the way that they think about things or process stuff just seems a little bit different.
Maybe you can think back to these conversations and then many more.
I mean, there's going to be...
There's so many conversations that we're going to record that are coming.
These are the things that can help you to understand where they come from.
You know, now that you know that some soldiers had to write their own obituaries before they deployed.
Clearly not everybody because that wasn't Jason's experience.
So awesome.
But...
When you work with somebody and it seems like they kind of have this morbid sense of reality, well, think about that.
Was this a person who at 19 or 23 years old had to sit down and write what the paper was going to read about them should they get killed overseas?
Whether they were in combat or not, maybe they were walking to the chow hall and a mortar came in and smacked them on top of the head and killed everybody within 50 meters of them.
Or they put 25,000 miles on the top of trucks driving around an active war zone, and God willing never had to squeeze the trigger, but every day they were exposed to the elements of war.
Well, yes, because that's a very good point.
Even if you didn't have to squeeze the trigger, you had to be ready to, and you better have been ready to, or should that need have arisen, you're a dead man.
And so I guess it's a really good point, Jason, to bring up that just because maybe you didn't fire a shot out of your weapon, you never fired your weapon in combat, doesn't mean that you didn't have to be prepared for it and have to think about what would happen, what's going to happen when and if this goes down.
That changes your perspective.
It changes your reality also.
We have like two minutes left.
We're running really short on time.
Last thought, Jason.
Well, being where a day removed from Veterans Day, and I remember the first few times that we ever spoke, that phrase, do something.
It continually runs through the back of my mind.
And I want to thank you for the opportunity to come on at your leisure and be able to have these conversations with you and with your audience.
And I am hopeful that this 86 is just your jumping off point.
And I am wonderfully waiting and watching what you're going to do over the next 860 shows.
So I wanted to say thank you, Richard, not only as a veteran, but as a man who is doing something that nobody else is doing right now in this space.
Thank you.
Wow.
Well, thank you.
And I plan on continuing.
I hope that you'll continue coming on the show.
I mean, I think that we have a lot of things to talk about.
I think we can affect a lot of change for a lot of people, both veterans and not veterans.
And so I think we should both just buckle up and start, and not question it, just get ready for the ride.
So thank you for your words and thank you for your time.
And to everybody watching and listening, if you're a veteran, happy Veterans Day yesterday.
I really do, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate your service.
We've run out of time, of course, so please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, have a great week.
We'll see you next week, of course, as usual.
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