65 ways civilians can simulate military life

[Rocket J Squrriel]

This is really old but still fun.

1. Dig a big hole in your backyard and live in it for 30 days straight.

2. Go inside only to clean the house. On weekends, you can eat in the house, but you can’t talk.

3. Pour 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your hole, then shovel it out, stack sandbags around it, and cover it with a sheet of old plywood.

4. Fill a backpack with 50 pounds of kitty litter. Never take it off outdoors. Jog everywhere you go.

5. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town, find the most run-down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you’re hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.

6. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.

7. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn the water pressure in your shower down to a trickle, then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn it up so hard it peels skin. On Saturdays and Sundays, declare to your entire family that they can’t use the shower in order to keep it clean for inspection.

8. Go inside and make your bed every morning. Have your wife tear the blankets off at random during the day. Re-make the bed each time until it is time to go back outside and sleep in your hole.

9. Have your next-door neighbor come over each day at 5 a.m. and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout, “Get up! Get up! You are moving too slow! Get down and do push-ups!”

10. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she’s going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the backyard at 6 a.m. and read it to you.

11. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours. Hang a sign on the bathroom door that says, “Unserviceable.”

12. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it’s ok for you to leave your house before 5 p.m.

13. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over. Have them all dig holes in your yard to live in. After 30 days, fill in the holes and wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home as you set out for a 25-mile walk and an after-action review.

14. Shower with the above-mentioned friends.

15. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e., Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).

16. Walk around your car for four hours, checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes. Write down on a piece of paper everything you want the shop to fix the next time you bring the car in. Give your wife the list to throw away.

17. Sit in your car and let it run for four hours with the windows down before going anywhere. Tune the radio to static and monitor it while the car is running. If it’s cold outside, don’t run the heat. Sleep on the hood or roof of the vehicle.

18. Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway three times a day, whether they need it or not.

19. Repaint your entire house once a month. Paint white rings around all the trees in your neighborhood. Paint all curbs yellow. Paint all rocks red.

20. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on.

21. Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot, and allow each pot to sit for five hours before drinking.

22. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every fifth item.

23. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN, Fox News, and the Weather Channel when you are inside to eat. Adjust the TV’s tint to green.

24. Avoid watching your green-tinted TV, except for movies, which are played in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

25. Have your five-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.

26. Sew big pockets to the legs of your pants. Don’t use them.

27. Spend two weeks sleeping in holes in your neighbor’s lawns and call it a deployment.

28. Spend a year sleeping in holes in your local area and call it world travel.

29. Attempt to spend five years working at McDonald’s and not get promoted.

30. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead bodies of your co-workers.

31. Blast heavy metal music on your stereo and conduct Ranger PT, grass drills, and sprints on your front lawn after your neighbors have gone to bed.

32. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their fighting positions. Don’t let them eat or sleep again for two days.

33. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without checking the pantry or refrigerator.

34. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they no longer pay attention to the menu anymore, so they just ask for hot dogs.

35. When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it is in the oven. Spread icing on really thick to level it off.

36. In the middle of January, place a gate at the end of your street. Have your family stand watch at the gate, rotating every four hours.

37. Make your family live with you in your hole for six weeks. Then tell them that at the end of the sixth week, you’re going to take them to Disneyland for “block leave.” When the end of the sixth week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for Individual Skill Certification, and that it will be another week before they can go back into the house.

38. In your hole (refer to #1), with 200 of your not-so-closest friends (see #13), get the flu.

39. Sleep in a thicket of blackberries or rose bushes. Tie a string to your foot that runs to the house. Have your wife yank on the string about three hours after you go to sleep. Crawl out of the bushes and go to the house to see what she wants. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, “Just making sure you’re okay.”

40. Do not sleep from 1:00 a.m. Monday mornings until 3 p.m., Wednesday afternoons. Tie a branch around your neck and chew on sand to stay awake.

41. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, dig a trench into your hole so that it fills up with water. During the worst part of the storm, get out of your hole and go for a 12-mile hike.

42. Don’t change your socks for a week. After they disintegrate off with pieces of your feet, put on an unbroken pair of new boots and go for another 12-mile hike.

43. For mechanized infantry or armor types: leave the lawn mower running next to your hole 24 hours a day. When you get an opportunity to sleep in your house, put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

44. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

45. Set up a port-a-potty in the corner of your yard. Once a week, have the service truck back into your yard and pump it out. Make sure the wind carries the smell into your neighbor’s house. Ignore his complaints.

46. Every other month, pull every single possession you own out of your house and line everything up on your lawn from smallest to largest, front to back. Count everything and write it down to file with your insurance company. Give your wife the list to throw away.

47. Lock wire the lug nuts on your car.

48. Buy a trash can, but don’t use it. Store the garbage in your hole.

49. Get up every night around midnight and stroll around your yard to “check the perimeter.”

50. Run the garden hose to your hole and turn it on. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. Jump up and get dressed as fast as you can. Run out into the backyard and get in your hole.

51. Once a month, take apart every major appliance in your home and put them back together again.

52. Build a scale model of your yard. Make your children draw sketches of it, including little arrows indicating what they are going to do when they go out to play. Post these sketches on a bulletin board for reference.

53. Remove the insulation and widen the frames of your front and back doors so that no matter how tightly you shut the door, the weather will still get inside.

54. Every so often, throw the cat in front of your hole and shout, “Enemy in the wire! Fire Claymores!” Then run into the house, and cut off the circuit breaker. Yell at the wife and kids for violating security and not maintaining good noise and light discipline.

55. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don’t plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go sit in your car. Say to no one in particular “Lost-One, this is Lost-Three, are you lost too, over?” Sit there for three or four hours with the engine running. Say again to no one in particular “Negative contact, Lost-Three out.” Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

56. Cook a gourmet meal, then eat it in the middle of a McDonald’s play place.

57. Receive 500 gallons of purified water. Only eat snow.

58. Find out that your house was built on an erosion point. Burn your house down. Build a new one three feet away.

59. Buy 10 pairs of sunglasses for your neighbors to steal.

60. When you catch the neighbors mentioned above, only blame the neighbors who just moved in.

61. Dig a new hole in your front yard for a bathroom next to your original hole. Only piss in Powerade bottles.

62. When above-mentioned hole is washed away, dig a new bathroom hole six inches from your fresh water supply.

63. Every two or three days, take your closest not-so-close friends camping across the street.

64. Shower semi-annually.

65. Have your parents take away your allowance on weekends that were a part of your vacation.

[Nightwatch2]

Ah, memories……

(Granting that was Army -Marine specific, but there were “a few” Navy - AF applicable ones)

[MikeKozlowski]

...You can also add:

66 (USAF Specific): Eat at a three-star restaurant.

[Craiglxviii]

I feel like doing #32 most days…

[Micael]

I felt this one in my soul.

15. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e., Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).

[Luddite]

Somewhere I have a list of CG specific ones I'll have to try to find. I can still identify with many of those, I went from a sea going Cutter to my last unit, which was a Port Security Unit, where we had to learn to dig rifle pits, etc etc, in addition to manning and patrolling harbors and elsewhere in the boats. Can't say I miss it, what I miss is not feeling like I've been beaten with a broom handle (yes, I know EXACTLY how that feels, ask me about my ex wife stories sometime.....) every day when I stagger out of bed.