Foxes in Paris

Good Morning! I am still trying to figure this thing out. It didn't like my second post and after wrestling with a "content" tag, I am going to try again.

I promised to begin with Paris. Paris France comes later. This Paris is Paris Island, South Carolina. If you are not on board, it is the Marine boot camp. I don't know what it is like now, but when I joined The Corps, PI was a swampy, humid hell populated by various viciously biting bugs, snakes and alligators, which made it the perfect birthing place for the United States Marines. There's one more creature, the King Of Beasts, residing there: It's name is Drill Instructor. To the lowly boot he is just "The DI" which was the Corps' way for a boot to spell GOD.

At the time I arrived, the sole purpose of PI was to reduce all boots to shivering clean slates and redesign them into U.S. Marines. This was (still is?) the DI's role, and sooner or later he would humble and humiliate his charges to the nth degree, with the following exchange:

DI: Son! Do yuh know you are as screwed up as a fox on ice skates?
Boot: Yes Sit!
DI: But yuh don't know how screwed up that is, do you?
Boot: No Sir!!!
DI:Yuh're so screwed up, yuh not only don't know who you are, you don't know where you are!
Boot: Yes, Sir!!!!
DI: And that's pretty damned screwed up, son!!!
Boot: Yes, Sir!!!
And so the DI proceeded to tell you who you really were...A Marine, Damn it! And, a devout member of the Corps, Damn it again!!

Once a Marine, always a Marine is the saying. Well, even now, I wonder if that goes for Lee Harvey Oswald too? He did in John Kennedy. Oh, well.

And I also have found that there are some Foxes On Ice Skates who know who and where they are, were and well be. That there are a very few Foxes, like yours truly, who are only at home shoed on unstable blades and constantly on thin, slippery surfaces.

However, I also admit, that most foxes have never seen either ice nor ice skates. Most of them line in Texas, anyway.

One last incident which causes me to view the world as one continuous circus also involved the Corps. I was out of PI, granted Marine status and goofing off. I'd been caught at least five times by Corporal Shuck, a twelve year-lifetime-two-striper, and this time he was really angry.
"Riefner, you think I'm really horse shit don't you? Well, before I could confirm this, his face got even redder and he yelled, "Well, if you think I'm horseshit, wait till I turn you in to Seargent Lester! He's HORSESHITTERER!

I laughed. And by the gods that made me, I'm still laughing. So, farewell for now. But remember....Never eat a wooden pickle, because it will leave splinters in your throat!More on wooden pickles later. On to foreign countries!!!