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For the record, I did not write this. I found this on facebook. I do not know who the original author of this writing is. If you are the original author, let me know, and I’ll gladly give you credit to this and update this post to include your name.

I thought this was a great piece. I’ve been in the Canadian Forces Army for a bit now. I was a reservist in the infantry for a year, from July 07 to July 08, with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment in Edmonton. I got in the Regular Force in April of 2009 and I’m now a member of the Electrical Mechanical Engineers (EME) as a Vehicle Technician.

I find this piece hilarious, but also quite accurate. The best part of being a soldier is laughing at ourselves at some of the strange and nonsensical things we do. So for a good laugh read this piece and enjoy a funny, but accurate, account of the typical Canadian Soldier’s life.

Enjoy!

Cuyler Callahan

HOW TO SIMULATE CANADIAN ARMY LIFE

Want to be a soldier, but really don’t want to commit precious years of your life? Here are some easy ways to simulate exactly what it’s like to be a Canadian soldier!

-.-.-.-.-FIELD LIFE-.-.-.-.-.-

–> Surround yourself with people who smoke like chimneys, drink like fish, bitch/whine/complain about EVERYTHING, and use foul language that would make a teamster blush.

–> Pack three days worth of clothes and toiletries. Live in your backyard for two weeks. Go into the house only once in that two weeks to shower.

–> Dig a hole in your backyard and live in it. Allow no direct contact with your family. Your only means of communication should be with letters that your neighbours have held for at least three weeks, discarding two of five.

–> Every two days, fill in the hole, move to another part of the yard and dig another hole. Every time you are approximately half-way through digging the hole, have somebody come by, compliment you on the fine hole you’ve dug and tell you to fill it in and dig it somewhere else.

–> Always dig a hole next to the hole you’re living in. This is your toilet. Re-dig the hole every time your move your living hole. Fill in the old hole and it with a “Foul Ground” sign. Have somebody remove the sign while you’re not looking.

–> Collect a jar full of ants, dirt, various bugs and mosquitos. Pour them down the back of your shirt.

–> Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your backyard and wait two weeks before eating them.

–> If it doesn’t rain, turn on the sprinklers.

–> If you’re incredibly tired and fed-up one night, stand guard duty in your hole from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Don’t sleep at all that day.

–> Sleep for only twenty minutes at a time. No matter how tired you are.

–> Cook your meals over sterno. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Leave to sit and turn ice cold. Eat everything in three minutes. After eating, run two kilometers.

–> Buy two rolls of toilet paper. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet all the time.

–> Run around your yard, periodically throwing yourself to the ground and crawling for at least 20 meters — or smack your shins, knees and elbows with a hammer.

–> For two days in a row, walk 10 kilometers without stopping. Wear a back pack with fifty-five pounds of weight in it. Bitch and whine the whole way.

–> When making sandwiches, leave the bread out for six days, or until it is hard and stale.

–> Have one meal a week served to you floating in its own grease in a large cooler or similar insulated container. Serve coffee, juice and other beverages the same way.

-.-.-.-.-GARRISON LIFE-.-.-.-.-.- (with the repetitive ones deleted)

–>Wear only military uniforms. Even though nobody cares, clean and press one dress uniform and wear it for 20 minutes.

–> Ask for equipment or articles of clothing you really need, and then have somebody tell you that you’re not entitled to it. Walk away.

–>Have your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend whine about how you’re always on deployment.

Whenever you’re bored, get drunk. Be bored often.

–> Study the owner’s manual for all household appliances. Routinely take an appliance apart, clean it and put it back together.

–>Start a project, any project. Have somebody continually stop by and make stupid suggestions to make the job “easier”. Say “yes sir” and do it the way they told you to do it. After they leave, go back to doing it the right way.

–>Move every two years. Whether you want to or not. When you get to a place you really hate, stay there for fifteen years.

–>Replace all your appliances and furniture with those which are outdated, in need of constant repair or dangerous to use. Do more with them than you would if they were new.

–> If you have nothing to do, clean something that doesn’t need cleaning.

-.-.-.-.-.-PEACEKEEPING-.-.-.-.-.-

–>Have two neighbours start a fight. Get in between them and have them hit you instead of each other.

–>After the neighbours have hit you several times, have them calm down. Have another, much larger person pretend to be your ally and piss the neighbours off again (by pretending to bomb their houses and basically bully them around) and start them fighting. Repeat the above.

–>Ask the “feuding” neighbours to throw rocks at you and call you names every time they see you, because of what the larger person did to their homes.

–>Bring the neighbours medical supplies, food and blankets. Have them slam the door in your face without saying thank you, because the much larger person bombed their houses. Get some of them to say thank you, and have the much larger person tell you to never bring them that stuff again.

-.-.-.-.-.-TRAINING ENVIRONMENT-.-.-.-.-.-

–> Run. Run a lot. Once in the morning, once at noon and once before supper. Run at least five kilometers each time, singing inane songs and pretending you really want to do this.

–> Stand to attention in a parking lot in the hot sun for five hours, or until you pass out and fall face first into the asphalt. Have somebody yell at you the entire time. Have this same person nitpick at you incessantly and then fine you $50.00 and confine you to your room for a week, coming out only to go to the bathroom, shower, or to eat.

–> Have somebody yell at you every time you’re stupid enough go outside without a hat on, slouch, or put your hands in your pockets.

–> Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you look bald or look like you lost a fight with a demented sheep shearer.

–> Give yourself twenty minutes less than you need for lunch. Eat so fast you don’t taste the food.

–> Buy a gas mask and wear it for two hours every day. Run around the yard while you’re wearing it. Do push-ups in it until you pass out. Fill the mask with pepper spray and recite your Social Insurance Number BACKWARDS, have somebody yell, “Wrong. Do it again!” and repeat this process four times before removing the mask and puking your guts out.

–> Clean and shine everything to perfection. Have somebody yell at you and call you a filthy pig. Pretend to clean and shine everything to perfection again (changing nothing), have the same person inspect it and say “good turnout”.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-INTERACTION WITH CIVILIANS-.-.-.-.-.-.-

–> When around civilians ensure to smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, bitch/whine/complain about EVERYTHING, and use foul language that would make a teamster blush.

–>Whenever civilians say or do anything stupid, shake your head and mutter in your most contemptuous/condescendingvoice; “f*@kin’ civvies”.

–>Use copious amounts of acronyms and NEVER explain them. When asked to explain shake your head and mutter in your most contemptuous/condescendingvoice; “f*@kin’ civvies”.

–> Have other people say stupid things to you like: “you don’t pay taxes, do you?”, “you get free housing”, “man, you must get paid a lot”. Shake your head and mutter in your most contemptuous/condescendingvoice; “f*@kin’ civvies”.

–>Demand that everyone never thank you for anything you do for them, look at you in a condescending manner and call you names like “G.I. Joe”, and “soldier boy”. Shake your head and mutter in your most contemptuous/condescendingvoice; “f*@kin’ civvies”.

I want to explore the ideas I have about people in general. I know that I have friends, and they are all very cool people to be around. I look into myself and sometimes think that I’m different from every other person out there. I am unique and special.

But is there a profound truth that we should all consider? Consider that we aren’t that unique, that we are not all that special. We are all human, we are all mammals, and have evolved through the thousands of years from simple cave men that hunted with clubs, and after the discovery of fire, quickly evolved to what we have today.

Now what I mean by saying we aren’t that unique from every other person out there is just that. When faced with certain situations, we will all follow a set reaction that is instinctual with our minds. Consider the goals of almost every person out there.

What do we all want in life? We all want to be successful. Success is of course all relative to individual people. Now people can be unique in some aspects, that’s what give us different personalities. That’s why a movie stars success is not the same success as a man who just wants to have a family and live comfortably.

We all strive for the same principals, but we view each principal with our own interpretations. But this still does not make us special from everybody else. Humans are indeed the most diverse species out there. Compared to say an animal. You can take any animal out there, and characterize it’s traits and attitudes, and name them. When you see another animal that looks the same and acts the same, then it is the same animal.

Humans can be characterized by looks, and we can be characterized by our instinctual goals, but we go about life all a little differently. I think people have different thought patterns from each other. Or look at it this way, you can take two individual people and put their thoughts into their own categories.

Have you ever spoken to somebody and you explain something to them in plain English, with plane language. It makes total sense to you. But they turn around and interpret it totally off from what you said. And every time you try to explain to them, they still get it wrong from what you said. It drives me up the wall, but at the same time, somebody can explain something to me, and I totally get it wrong over and over again.

I think that is because we have our own methods of thoughts, our own ways of achieving the goals that our species has been instinctively born with to achieve.

Now reading this, even I can see where my idea that people are not that unique is thrown out the window. But I still think that we all are very much the same. Yes we are different enough that you could say we are different from others of our same species. That’s why we have wars. We think differently then somebody else, and we have fights.

But think about it this way. If we were really that unique, don’t you think we could think of a way to not have wars, we could stop fighting, because if we really were that special, we could override our pride, and our instincts to fight?

Well this is where the principals of our species start to seem really shallow. This is where you can look at the world as a whole and categorize them as human. Look at how wars start. People want power, they want to be on the top, they want to rule more, own more, control more.

Look at a pack of wolves, there is always a wolf on top, if two packs of wolfs meet, they’ll fight, the winning pack will either chase the other pack out of their territory, or they’ll take control of the new pack. Within the pack, there is always fights for the top dog.

Look at the world, even with all our individual actions and notions, our unique thought processes, we still have the principal instincts that make us strive for the same thing. We still strive to be on top. We carve out our territory be it the head of a family, to the leader of a country, and anybody that challenges us we fight off in our own way.

Now we look at that as natural. If somebody threatens our family, we fight back, somebody threatens our country we fight back. It seems natural. And it also seems natural that we will have challengers to fight. Or it seems natural to be a challenger.

That is just one principal of humanity we can characterize as human. It’s also in every other species out there. Though the unique part of humanity is how we go about being the boss. We go about it in different ways, we can be tricksy, bold, or we can use brute force. A pack of wolves will just beat each other up without much thought of when, or how.

But needless to say, that is something that characterizes humanity. When I am in any city, you can tell that each city has it’s own unique hum. Live in or near a city for a while and you will tell if you like it. Why would you like one city more then the other. It’s the unique people that are in the city, with their unique ways of thinking. A city is a melting pot, and the people melt to make up the soul of a city and give it it’s feeling, it’s vibe.

Though we have unique cities, once again, there are still the principals of a city that make it shallow. People are still striving for the same things. You have your males and your female interactions. You have your crime bosses, you have your business owners. You have your nice and mean people.

But the end goal of all these people is to achieve their end goals of success and no matter how nice a person is, they still have their end goal. Why do we become friends with somebody. Not that it’s bad to have friends, but if a friend is not contributing to you, there is only so long before you kick them out the door.

Friendships work when two people contribute to the relationship. You are both trying to get somewhere, and if your being weighed down, no matter how nice of a person you are, you will tell the other to go away or you wish they will go away. So there is something that is shallow, but makes sense. That’s why nobody trusts anybody to a full extent in this world. You can’t tell if somebody is going to be beneficial to you, or if they are going to use you.

People use each other to their own ends. We might contribute our time to help our friends, and they to help us, or we might use and abuse. It all depends if your nice person or not. But you’ll never see anybody who just helps to help. Even if it seems they are, somehow they are getting something out of it, even if it’s a good feeling they like.

If you were to help somebody on the side of the road, maybe give them a ride into town, and they offer to pay you. You might say “No, don’t worry about it.” You drop them off and drive away. You’ll feel good afterward. This will contribute to you. Maybe your religious and think it’ll help you get back to God.

Whatever the reason is, if you didn’t think it would help you out at all, you wouldn’t help that person. If you stopped to help and you knew you would feel like shit afterward, and you wouldn’t feel at all good, or that you should do this good deed. I know people wouldn’t help out.

That is a shallow concept about people, all our actions lead to our own success. Now don’t think I’m being a hater of the human race. All I am trying to explain is that the human race isn’t this Godly race. We are mammals with instincts we follow.

Look at any interaction of a person, and sure they solve all interactions with their own unique ways, but the goals are always the same, always for the same reasons. The human race isn’t so unique from the other species. In fact watching the human race interact and do its thing can sometimes be boring.

Go to a mall and watch people walk around the mall. I can classify people into their groups. There are you pre-teen mall rats. They hang out at the mall because they hate their parents and think their life is ruined. You can tell the rich people, the poor people, the tech junkies, the nerds, the cool kids, the mothers, the divorced singles, the lesbians, the gays, the mid life crisis people, the dads, the office workers,etc. It’s not that I sit there and just start naming stuff off, I just look at people and my mind automatically labels people.

People look at me and probably label me. We all label each other, it is just an instinct. We can use this ability to find people that will help us with our needs and goals.

Sometimes it’s nicer to watch the nature. Animals are indeed more simple then humans. They are not as unique in thought as humans are. They do have their own unique attitudes. I know this because I used to work on a diary farm and I could classify the cows into their own little groups based on attitude. But they aren’t that different from each other. Not as much as people.

Yes people are unique in thoughts, unique in how we go about reaching our goals. But our goals, even though different from each other, they still are just tools to the bigger, simpler, goal of success which is part of every animal out there. Even if the idea of success is to be the leader of a country, a rich millionaire, a movie star, or just having a simple family with the comfortable things.

The lion wants success, the cow wants success, and ant wants success. We all go about it differently, but all our actions are to lead us to success. That is what I mean by a shallow world. It is easy to read, easy to categorize. People don’t really seem so special as I was raised to believe they are.

I think I’m special, I think my friends are special, I think my family is special. But that is an instinct once again. And it won’t change. I can’t change it, it’s just how I think. Every person out there thinks there are special people with special abilities, talents, and ways of going about life. Really they are doing the same thing as you, trying to reach success. Success which from the beginning of our race has been the motivation of everything we do from finding a food source and a mate to starting wars. It’s just our animal instinct.

No matter what state the world is in, our instinct to succeed will change it and make it evolve into something else. The world is special in the fact it holds life and holds our species which is the dominant species on earth. From the beginning when our race evolved our race succeeded above the others to be dominant. We were the smartest.

But we are still just that, a species. We can be categorized, even by our own kind which leads to the question:

If we can be categorized and sub categorized, how special are we really?