Xàbia Shrimper
Co-founder of ShrimperZone
Anyone who is currently serving and has served in the past should be able to identify with many of these certain 'traits'; sadly I do!
You know you've been Defence institutionalised (made military) when...
You know you've been Defence institutionalised (made military) when...
- You use target indication to point out hot chicks.
- You use the term 'chicks'
- You insist on dancing like a dick, whilst your civvie mates insist on trying to dance 'properly'.
- Your civvie mates don't understand any of the terminology you use such as 'no dramas', 'squared away', 'take a knee' etc.
- You can't help saying "Roger", "Say again" and other snappy bits of VP
- You use acronyms thinking your civvie mates will understand what you are talking about
- You cringe, and mutter under your breath 'haircut', when you see men with long hair.
- You walk at a ridiculous pace and are physically incapable of walking at the shopping pace of your girlfriend.
- You refer to personal organisation as "admin"
- Your girlfriend is stored in your mobile phone address book as 'Zero Alpha'
- You use patrol hand signals in a night club if people can't hear you
- You always use the 24 hour clock....
- Nothing soldiers do shocks you any more....
- You can't watch war movies without giving a running commentary.
- People in prison have more contact with women than you do....
- Whenever you spell something out you use the phonetic alphabet....
- You don't trust your mum/wife/girlfriend/any woman to iron your kit because deep down you think that your ironing is better....
- You point using your whole hand in a karate chop motion....
- You find that the conversation somehow always comes back round to you, because you're more interesting than most topics of conversation....
- You think not shaving is a treat....
- You get really irritated when people you don't know call you 'mate'....
- You can read a junk mail catalogue from cover to cover and refer to everything that is useful as a Gucci bit of kit.
- You refer to smoke as 'a double edged sword'.
- You spend hours wondering where in civvie street you can get an equal disposable income and at least 6 weeks holiday a year, by completing an inversely proportionally tiny amount of tangible work
- Your blood boils when you see civvies wearing DPM.
- Going out on Thursday "international army night out" wherever it may be,or whichever course one is on, involves forming the ring-of-steel, talking about ourselves and the army and aggressively staring at girls; who if they don't immediately come over are obviously lesbians.
- Should any man dare break this ritual, and despite talking to the prettiest of girls - as we would like to do, if it weren't for the fact we tend to chew our own tongues and dribble - he is clearly gay!
- You come out in a cold sweat if you find yourself still working after lunch on a Friday....
- You have to stop work at 10am for NAAFI break or else you might not make it to lunch....
- At least half of your DVD collection are war movies....
- Even though your disposable income is twice that of a civvie you still manage to spend it all, every month, with nothing to show for it, about a week after you've told all your soldiers that you 'can't believe how much money they waste on the urine'....
- You feel guilty about wearing jeans in front of senior officers in the mess
- The sight of rolling countryside makes you scan for 'enemy depth'....
- You think that eating every meal for a week with the same spoon that you licked clean and kept in the pocket of the same shirt you've worn all week is perfectly normal....
- All of your food has to be prepared by a chef because you're incapable of cooking anything that can't either be boiled in a bag or eaten cold....
- You lie when people ask you what you do for a living....
- When leaving your phone number on a voice message you can't just give it once, has to be repeated.
- When surveying open ground (when not looking for enemy in depth) you think, good tank country. If a forestry block - I could get a platoon in here
- You survey open ground.
- When you are pointing out some natural feature you begin with "Reference bushy topped tree etc etc"
- Your girlfriend has started saying "admin" and gave you the "Chop" when telling you to put the bin out.
- When meeting mates in a pub you always turn up 5 minutes early and are secretly angry that nobody else has.....Worse still, if it's a venue you haven't been to before, you turn up 15 minutes early to put in a CTR, in order that you are definitely there 5 minutes early.
- You subconsciously red-pen everything you read.