Because Arethusa wants to know.

I joined the Air Force as a carpenter…and a liar.

The recruiter offered me a career as a Security Forces Specialist and I jumped at the opportunity because he made it sound positively glorious. However, at the end of basic training, I was approached with the news that the Air Force had overbooked the Security Forces school. This left me with the option of changing career fields or getting out of the Air Force free and clear. I chose the former.

Upon reviewing the list of available careers, I realized I was being offered the jobs no one wanted to do. The Air Force has jobs that don't show up in the recruiting ads (for good reason) so people are largely unaware of their existence. I'm sure enlistments would drop if the Air Force came out with a recruiting poster that depicted a guy in uniform plunging a toilet. The least unappealing of the job openings was carpentry. I told them that carpentry was for me and they asked if I had any experience in the field to which I replied with a bold-faced lie. I told them I had done carpentry for years…I mean, what kind of moron can’t swing a hammer…right?

So they waived my training and sent me straight to a combat ready heavy construction unit called Red Horse where I was expected to know what I was doing without being trained. Those were some hard years.

One of the tasks with which I was expected to be familiar was roofing, and we did a lot of it.

Once upon a time, I was installing a skylight on the roof of a building. I applied roofing tar between the skylight's sheet metal flange and the roof sheathing but still needed to nail the thing down so I pulled a roofing nail from my nail pouch and began tapping it in an attempt to puncture the thin sheet metal.

I obviously underestimated the strength of the metal and found myself taking more aggressive strikes at the nail head while holding it between my forefinger and thumb.

I somehow got tar on the face of the hammer and on one particularly forceful swing the nail disappeared because it stuck to the tar on the hammer and before I knew it was gone I swung again. I felt pain and thought the nail had just deflected on the previous swing causing me to smash my thumb with the hammer. My first reaction was to pull my hand toward by body and grasp my thumb and this is when I realized the nail came down with the hammer and penetrated my thumb, as well as the sheet metal. I was nailed to the roof.

Pulling the nail out hurt worse than putting it in. In fact, I had to get someone else to do it for me.

The seven years I spent in that Red Horse unit saw that I was eventually trained and gave me a century worth of story telling.

I'll share more... in time.