I often wondered about the Office of Rumor Control back when I was in the army.

Of course any organization of any size has a rumor mill. It's a part of life. In the army we referred to our rumor mill as 'Rumor Control'. It had a snappy military air about it.

While in fact the rumor mill was created by pretty much all of us, one day we were sitting around over coffee and fantasizing where the countless rumors actually got started. Of course, most of us sitting there had started a rumor or two ourselves but let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

We depicted an office of about a dozen guys sitting around drunk on their asses by 0800 thinking up various tales to get started. We also opined that at about noon they would break out the LSD, peyote and other psychedelics and REALLY get things going. 

Our First Sergeant overheard our conversation and in a rare moment of his dry humor came into the conversation and told us with a straight face that he had an old squad mate in the unit and that they used no drugs of any kind. They simply thought up the stuff as they went along.

Of course we knew Old Top was BSing us but it was fun listening to his take on things. Then he made an 'accidental' reference to 'next week's possible unannounced field exercise' and left.

We broke up almost instantly to check our field gear and make sure it was in shape. We also put the word out and many of the guys went to their field gear and checked it.

Of course, there was no unannounced field problem, but a couple of days later he announced an upcoming inspection of field gear.

Those of us that has taken the rumor Top had started to heart were ahead of things as we had at least inventoried our gear and given it a preliminary check. I had cleaned much of mine up.

Some time after the inspection most of the original group met and we chatted about the fact that Top had taken advantage of the rumor mill to get things done. In effect he had actually made life better for us.

I guess that's because an old soldier knew how to take smoothly advantage of everything both good and bad that the system offered.

I miss people like Top because in spite of only having a grammar school education he was a genius.

I have said this before and I will say it again. An awful lot of the best teachers I have ever met all had the same first name. Their first name was 'Sergeant'. 




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY