# You know the army is getting to your brain when... [Compiled]



## chrisf (16 Feb 2004)

I know starting new threads related to other threads is frowned on, but I figured this warrented a new thread...

They‘re renumbered and compiled, and a few of the sillier ones have been removed. Also, all references to loosing count in the order have been removed.

==

1. You unconsciously reach out with a lighter to burn strings off the clothing of your friends and relatives, and they scream.

2. While out shopping in the summer, you realise the pocket of your cargo shorts was undone, you quickly fix it and look about nervously.

3. You used to have nightmares about pickles, but the nightmares are becoming more and more about relish as of late.

4. You refer to your wife/girlfriend/signifigant other as niner domestic.

5. You think of the best ways to perform an attack on everyday things, such as your house or a hill.

6. You have pets...and demand that they fall in line...even the fish...especially the fish.

7. You are a moderator on this army.ca

8. Springing to attention whenever you hear "O‘Canada" regardless of the situation.

9. Never trust any male with hair past his ears.

10. Continuously look for good cam and concealment while performing everyday tasks.

11. Use radio voice proceedure while talking on a cell phone.

13. Your yelling out flanking commands and fire control orders when having a snowball fight.

14. The harder and more challenging your civilian job gets the bigger the smile on your face. And your civvie coworkers thinks its weird.

15. You realize that driving is much better than walking, When you drive to work and you see people waiting for the bus in the cold... ...thank god i got my trucksac!!-

16. Teaching the dog to leopard crawl up to the objective, which is any cute furry animals that the wife likes.

16. Throwing in soiled diapers to clear out the kids room

17. To me, razor wire is a better fence then home depot stuff

18. Pink flimingo‘s are used as figure 11‘s

19. Dressing up the kids as soliders every halloween

20. Stuck in traffic and dreaming of having a tank or helicopter

21. Watching people‘s face‘s when you use jargon and they don‘t have a clue what you just said but agree!

22. Once you enter the woods, be it a walk with the wife, camping etc... your starting to switch into army mode 

23. Your solution to almost every problem is violence, speed, agression

24. You say ‘say again‘ never ‘repeat‘ when asking someone to say something again.

25. You use hand signals and you and your army mates can take out entire buildings during paintball games.

26. You don‘t [associate with] people who can‘t meet timing.

27. You refer to your pets as troops. "Come on in, troop"

28. [This one mostly applies to those of us who are student-reservists] You desperately fight the urge to subtley jab the guy asleep next to you in class.

28. You order pizza and ask for "one times pepperoni, two times coke, and one times hawaiian."

29. You‘re unable to lean against a wall, ever, and feel the need to correct civvies who do.

30. It feels awkward to carry anything in your right hand if your left is empty. 

31. You end up walking in step with those around you, without even trying.

32. You try to redeem free beers for all the buttons you spot that are undone. 

33.[another one for students] You say Sir or Maam after every sentence while talking to your profs

44. Unable to put hands in pockets, or if you like to , it feels like a priviledge

45. You‘ve ever said "Pass the f*****g gravy please" in front of your 92 year old Grandmother at a family dinner, without blinking. [You know the *rest* of your family is in the army as well if she passes you the gravy, also without blinking.]

46. You‘ve ever looked through the phone book, just out of curiosity, to see if there was anyone named "Pete Bloggins".

47. You chant "left! Right! Left! Right! Left! Right! Left!," in your head when walking in public.

48. You constantly tell your two kids they need to work as a unit.

49. After hearing your kid has played with your kit you notice he is wearing the helmet wrong and demand pushups.

50. Laugh and shake your head when you see people complain how cold the -2 degree weather is after doing a winter exercise the weekend before with the tempeture of -30 with windchill.

51. Enjoying the priceless look on their face when you tell them that you slept outside in the -30 with windchill tempetures the weekend before.

50. When driving through the coutryside you constantly think of the 5 Crew Comanders must knows:
       1. Where am I
       2. Where is my next position
       3. Likely enemy positions
       4. Obstacles en-route
       5. If the panzer comes under fire I will....

51. When in grid lock in downtown Ottawa, you start murmuring crew firing drills.

52. Field strip any weapon that the army throws at you, but replace the shopvac bag, your scratching your head.

53. Slap on a 100 pound ruck, march 25k at night in swamp water, assault something, but only if you could put that much effort going to the inlaws.

54. Civi war stories and army war stories can‘t compare. 

55. You wake up at 05:00 and have morning PT.

56. You wake up at 0630 and panic because you think you‘re late for PT...then realise it‘s Saturday.

57. You can make complete scentences using nothing but acronyms.

58. Refer to all your other clothing other than Combats as Civi Clothes.

59. Start thinking that 5 clicks isn‘t that far.

60. You start replacing months with taskings IE: as soon as this tasking is done I‘m on block leave.

62. To be clear, you use the phonetic alphabet for those especially important things to say. 

63. You manage to polish off a meal that would take anyone else 45 minutes to eat in 30 seconds. You find this perfectly normal.

64. When someone (in the civvy world) calls you ‘sir‘ or ‘ma‘am‘ (out of politeness,) you reply ‘don‘t call me sir/ma‘am, I work for a living!

65. When you hear anyone call ANYONE ‘sir‘ or ‘ma‘am,‘ you jump 10 feet in the air and look around in fear. 

66. Your bed has hospital corners.

67. Lacking a rifle, you carry a 1-m long, 3.34 kg. stick around with you everywhere, including the john. You make sure to shine and polish your stick to perfection daily.

68. You refuse to turn on the light after dark to be ‘tactical.‘

69. You dry the sink/drinking fountain after every use.

70. When entering a room, you automatically look for places where dust might be hiding..

71. Meeting someone for the first time you look at the length of their hair.

72. You no longer look at the ground when walking (hunting mode).

73. You walk at a pace that nearly kills anyone walking with you. 

74. Diving into a ditch at the side of the road when the local bus comes up behind you as it has the same engine as an AVGP.

75. You never, ever, EVER walk on the grass.

76.You refer to consuming food and beverage as " putting it downrange."

77. You make your neighbour sign a DND 638 when he borrows the lawn-mower. 

78. Refering to empty beer bottles as "Dead Soldiers" and forming them into full squadrons...complete with 3 troops and an assault troop, adm troop, SHQ etc.

79. You stop private school students on the street and tell them to tuck in their shirts, straifghten their ties and shine their shoes. 

82. When going out of Friday night you ask your buddies if they have 404‘s to see who will drive.

83. When eating fruit, pulling the stem off and yelling "grenade"

84. When someone is angry and brings you a problem they are dealing with you tell them," Stop whining and soldier on!".

85. When writing down the date you write it: 10 Jan 04.

86. When you hear fireworks you shout take cover and hide in the nearest ditch.

87. You get that huge grin on your face when you think of Basic. (PT, Inspections, Classes, trashed sleeping quarters, rolling in dirt, sleeping in freezing weather, etc...) And your civvy co-workers thinks you a numbnut to wish that sort of treatment 

88. You reach for your C7 in your sleep

89. You keep the lid of your deoderant clear of ‘white crud‘ 

90. You think you might be starting to like pipe music.

91. You don‘t bother with fireworks any more because you realize they are just watered-down versions of paraflares, arty sims, and thunder flashes, that civis use a a few times a year.

92. You refuse to let your "significant other" iron ANYTHING of yours.

93. You do the ‘air rifle‘

94. You refuse to take an elevator, and always run up and down the stairs. You then call the people in the elevator ‘weak‘.

95. (For students) You have a backpack on your back everywhere you go, with both straps even and tightened up as tight as they‘ll go. You then shake your head at people who have their backpacks on sloppy.

96. You say ‘Fife‘ and ‘Tree‘ to civvies instead of ‘Five‘ and ‘Three‘

97. Your friends start to tell you the time in 24hr format

98. You‘re always at least 5 minutes early.

99. War movies aren‘t any good anymore because they‘re "too Hollywood." i.e.: explosions don‘t look like that, guns don‘t sound like that, and helicopters can‘t DO that.

100. You cover all your civvie items (duffle bag,coach etc..) in the closest CADPAT material you can

101. Every single thing you own is labelled with your last name and last 3

102. You look at your house hunting trip as a recce for your next biv site. 

104.You salute your boss at your civvy job just out of force of habit.

105. ...You have no civvy job

106. You use Acronyms to describe EVERYTHING! Then act irritated when someone asks you to explain.

107. Wearing articles of clothing labeled "Extreme Cold Weather" in order to go have a smoke is a normal daily occurance. 

108. I have to make sure I‘m not being insulted in an offhanded way if someone mentions the word "chicken" in my presence.

109. You‘ve got a good war story involving a moose.

110. You look outside at the rain and say longingly to your closest loved one, "Good patrolling weather."

111. You‘ve been driving an LSVW so much that while in rush hour traffic in your POMV on the 401 you go to honk the horn at some plonker that has cut you off and you engage the windsheild whipers and spray the windsheild with washer fluid.

112. Kids make a fort/tree house, you build a trench system interlaced with razor wire, trip flares and other crafty stuff that would strike fear with neighbourhood kids.

113. You wear your helmet when you play video games

114. All video games are military related

115. You can wear a beret and not worry about looking gay.  [Correction - you can wear a beret in the hopes of looking gay, but the Army still won‘t discharge you....]

116. Your browser favorites has more then 10 military sites.

117. All non military types are refered to as Civvie

118. Smoking and a timmie‘s while jogging is normal 

119. You remember when this line was a charge reference back in the day (now 129, think about it)  

120. You are taking stock of things you‘ll need for taking out Santa up on the roof this X-Mas. ie: Claymores, Elsie mines, low wire entanglements, deer feed to lure him in....

121. You laugh at people in the Terry Fox run after they fall out at the 7km mark and yell at them "Your weak!" 

122. You‘ll run 20 km for pt, or march 13 kms with a ruck on, but drive across the street for a case of beer....

123. You walk into a civie doctor‘s office with your spouse and wonder what‘s all the sick, lame, lazy doing there.

124. Before you get into your car you do a formal DI, following a checklist. 

125. When you get into your car and look for the "master switch".

126. You favorite pair of shoes are your cbt boots.

127. When your favorite sweater is an American Alpha liner under your plaid hunting jacket.

128. When you phone home to your wife with weekend plans, and your start off by saying, "Hi, Warning order, prepare to copy."

129. You know what this line number means. QR&O Vol 2......  

130. When somone trys to interupt a conversation you‘re having you say "wait out". 

131. [For the older guys... ] Even though you lost your SIN card 26 years ago you still remember it as part of your name.

132. You go camping with the family and have them dig trenches with arcs of fire

134. You walk up to some long hair hippie and stomp your foot saying "is that hurting you?" out of habit. 

135. You almost yell "ROOM" when your professor walks in the room at school.

136. You notice the snow in your front yard is perfect for building a snow defense. 

137. You fill out an IMP feedback card for new types of ham steak (they‘re all so good!) 

138. You‘ve been out of the army for 6 weeks, but still wake up in a panic at 03:00 on a Sunday wondering if you missed the bug out. 

138: You own more army clothing than civi street clothing.

139: The civi clothing you do own, as closely resembles issued clothing as possible (ie: all green/tan cargo pants)

140: Your sears/zellers catologue has been replaced by a Canadian Peacekeeper or dropzone tactical catologue

141: You have a 2‘ X 4‘ army poster hanging up in your room.

142: You have an entire room in youre house dedicated to the army and your gear.

143: You actually look forward to waking up at 0500 to go to work.

144.You look into your closet to find a sea of green.

145. Waking up at 0630 is oversleeping.

146. Waking up at 0800 is sleeping in .

143. When you see a bunch of Punk Rocker‘s who have all these peircing‘s as if they have been caught,tagged and let go and you think "A Few Month‘s in the Reg. will sort that lot out"

148. When the walls in your house are painted in CADPAT. 

149. When running errands such as buying milk or other groceries, you think if you‘re in need of other essentials such as boot polish.

150. "Never Pass A Fault" becomes a recurring theme in your nightmares.

151. You actually start to twitch at the effort it takes to restrain yourself from turning around and smacking the hippie twerp behind you who insists on talking the entire time the prof is lecturing.

152. You know the best way to make an RCR insane with rage is to ask him "Holy crap, when was the last time you polished your poultry warning device?"

153. You start to come to attention when you hear someone yelling at you (Parent, teacher, prof, etc)

154. Your favourite quote to your roommate bitching about something is "Aweee Muffin"

155. When your coworkers come back late from their breaks you look at them and say "meet your ******* timings already!"

156. When at a wedding you check out who polished their shoes/boots or not and shake your head.

157. There are more Canadian Flags in your computer room than there are computers.

158. You‘re in a movie theatre or somewhere dark, and when the lights come on suddenly you automaticaly close your "shooting eye".

159. When you stand at attention for the national anthem, even if you‘re at home in your bathrobe, or in a sports bar watching the game on a big screen TV, and the anthem is being sung a capella by an 8 year old girl on Hockey Night in Canada rather than being played by a brass/reed band.

160. You actually know why they renamed Pine Street in Winnipeg.

161. Again for the students: You stand up in front of the committee to defend your thesis, and introduce yourself: "Good morning, I am MCpl Bloggins, and this is an unclassified briefing on..."

162. The smell of burning diesel is comforting.

163. Youre constantly worried about saying the wrong thing and being forced to watch those SHARP Videos again...

164. You are able to sleep peacefully in the back of a fast-moving truck with no seatbelts and horrible suspension as it drives down paths that were probably considered at one time roads, but not anymore... 

165. You often quote the funniest offensive lines in the SHARP training videos.

166. You always wear an army issued OD green t-shirt to the gym, and people think you wear the same shirt everyday.


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## pte anthony (17 Feb 2004)

I think its pretty fuc**n great I am emailing it to fellow service members   :soldier:


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## Franko (18 Feb 2004)

158. When you start emailing this thread to you buddies.   

Regards


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## Thompson_JM (19 Feb 2004)

159. youre in a movie theatre or somewhere dark, and when the lights come on suddenly you automaticaly close your "shooting eye".


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## Michael Dorosh (19 Feb 2004)

160.  When you stand at attention for the national anthem, even if you‘re at home in your bathrobe, or in a sports bar watching the game on a big screen TV, and the anthem is being sung a capella by an 8 year old girl on Hockey Night in Canada rather than being played by a brass/reed band.


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## Michael Dorosh (19 Feb 2004)

161.  You actually know why they renamed Pine Street in Winnipeg.


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## Infanteer (19 Feb 2004)

> You actually know why they renamed Pine Street in Winnipeg


Would that happen to be three VC‘s?


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## Phillman (19 Feb 2004)

> Originally posted by Infanteer:
> [qb]
> 
> 
> ...


Yup, now known as Valour Road.


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## Michael Dorosh (19 Feb 2004)

I guess Infanteer‘s not in the Army, the lousy _poseur_!!


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## Infanteer (19 Feb 2004)

You got me....

I am a fake and will not post at CDNarmy anymore, because I must get back to my sniper cell.


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## clasper (21 Feb 2004)

162.  Again for the students: You stand up in front of the committee to defend your thesis, and introduce yourself: "Good morning, I am MCpl Clasper, and this is an unclassified briefing on..."


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## patrick666 (21 Feb 2004)

117. smoking and a timmie‘s while jogging is normal 


Hahahaha... I can see it now...

"GET MOVING WORM!"
"SIR, I HAVEN‘T STIRRED MY COFFEE YET, SIR!"


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## Spr.Earl (22 Feb 2004)

> Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
> [qb] 161.  You actually know why they renamed Pine Street in Winnipeg. [/qb]


Good one Mike.


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## patrick666 (22 Feb 2004)

I think the majority of us have seen the heritage commercials. 

Ca-naaad-aaa.


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## scm77 (23 Feb 2004)

166 You can wear a beret and not worry about looking gay.


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## chrisf (23 Feb 2004)

#1?? You find the smell of burning diesel comforting.


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## chrisf (23 Feb 2004)

> Originally posted by scm77:
> [qb] 166 You can wear a beret and not worry about looking gay. [/qb]


Sorry if my PC is showing... but what about gay members of the military?

(Side note, I oppose gay men in the military, as most of any of my civvie friends who happen to be gay are also in substantially better shape then myself... can‘t have them showing me up...0

(Side note to a side note... I was kidding about everything except the better shape part in that last side note.)


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## Thompson_JM (23 Feb 2004)

167: Youre constantly worried about saying the wrong thing and being forced to watch those Awful SHARP Videos again...


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## stukirkpatrick (23 Feb 2004)

168.  You are able to sleep peacefully in the back of a fast-moving truck with no seatbelts and horrible suspension as it drives down paths that were probably considered at one time roads, but not anymore...


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## Korus (23 Feb 2004)

169: You often quote the funniest offensive lines in the sharp training videos.


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## spacelord (23 Feb 2004)

> Originally posted by Korus:
> [qb] 169: You often quote the funniest offensive lines in the sharp training videos. [/qb]


you mean "he can‘t be gay, he‘s an indian"?


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## Korus (23 Feb 2004)

ROTFL!


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## alan_li_13 (23 Feb 2004)

170. you always wear an army issued OD green t-shirt to the gym, and people think you wear the same shirt everyday


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## Michael Dorosh (23 Feb 2004)

> Originally posted by scm77:
> [qb] 166 You can wear a beret and not worry about looking gay. [/qb]


Correction - you can wear a beret in the hopes of looking gay, but the Army still won‘t discharge you....


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## chrisf (23 Feb 2004)

Edited some of the new ones in, see the begining of the thread.


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## CircusBTN (25 Sep 2007)

This is a bit old now, but is it ok if I post a few things here to add to the list? Or is it finished?


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## Yrys (25 Sep 2007)

Better to add here then start a new one. But I seem to remember a longer  and more recent one in radio chatter ...


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## ArmyRick (5 Feb 2022)

You tell everyone at your civy job to be at the O group (when meant meeting) and no one has a clue WTF your talking about


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## Kat Stevens (5 Feb 2022)

You use the proper NATO phonetic alphabet for letters over the phone and not Alice, Bill, Clifford, David...


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## Good2Golf (5 Feb 2022)

Kat Stevens said:


> You use the proper NATO phonetic alphabet for letters over the phone and not Alice, Bill, Clifford, David...


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## medicineman (6 Feb 2022)

Kat Stevens said:


> You use the proper NATO phonetic alphabet for letters over the phone and not Alice, Bill, Clifford, David...


Yup...I have to suppress using NINER on the phone/dictation software when giving numbers/lab results


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## Gunnar (6 Feb 2022)

medicineman said:


> Yup...I have to suppress using NINER on the phone/dictation software when giving numbers/lab results


I’ve always thought that it should be taught in schools.  It was designed to prevent misinterpretation.  And that’s when I want to use it.  As a recent member, I love being able to call HR and spell my name ONCE and have it understood.


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## lenaitch (6 Feb 2022)

I used to work with a guy (recently passed) who could string together the most obscure words to do a phonetic spelling over the radio that would leave dispatchers in stitches, or say some complex eastern European-type name and just say 'usual spelling'.  It's a learned craft.


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## ModlrMike (6 Feb 2022)

I actually printed a copy of the phonetic alphabet a couple of weeks ago and gave it to one of our clerks. She was killing me trying to spell stuff over the phone.


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