SAN DIEGO, CA – According to sources aboard Los Angeles-class submarine USS Asheville, the screaming in crew berthing moments ago was only Electronics Technician Second Class Brian Freeman having another bad dream he was in the Army.
“It was horrible… awful,” Freeman said, forehead still damp with night sweat. “There was eye protection everywhere. I… I had just received orders to Fort Hood, and we hadn’t beaten Navy at football in decades!”
“There, there,” said one of Freeman’s shipmates. “You’re here now, safe and sound on a tiny tin can where we’ve all got staph infections and haven’t seen the light of day in months.”
“Thank GOD,” said Freeman, who truly couldn’t have it worse unless he was in the Army.
The 26-year-old from Nebraska, who every day lives amidst ugly gray paint, tight passageways, and impossibly steep ladders; who smells of grease, is hideously pale, and has no privacy to speak of whatsoever began having nightmares he was in the Army after he met a couple of mournfully dull, irreversibly brainwashed soldiers just days prior to deploying with the Asheville.
“I knew they were soldiers the moment I saw them,” Freeman said. “Nothing says Army Strong like terrible polos tucked into jeans with no belts at the bar.”
“The one with the miserable flattop tried to engage me in conversation, and it was like staring into the void of death itself. Certainly makes a guy appreciate what he has, even if it’s just this low-oxygen, highly-irradiated metal tube.”
Indeed, despite sharing a paper-thin mattress with three other guys, having once slept in the company of rickety torpedoes, and every second being literally one crewmember’s mistake away from certain death in the cold, black water surrounding his boat, Freeman says he simply can’t imagine anything more humiliating than being in a service that thinks so little of him he would be forced to wear a reflective belt on the walk from his car to the chow hall.
At press time, sources confirmed the soulless soldier Freeman had met in the bar – who actually is stationed at Fort Hood – was frantically relieved to wake from a dream he was in the Air Force.
“Jesus,” the painfully uninteresting man gasped. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I were a pussy.”
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