How You Know The Perfect Ribbon Is The Product For You
How do you know The Perfect Ribbon is a product for you?
If during your time of service you experienced…
-What it’s like to be missing leg hair from shirt stays.
-What it’s like to have a shirt stay snap off under your pants.
-The term fancy Friday.
-An undershirt is not required, but you will be corrected for not wearing an undershirt.
-Ribbons are not even required… good luck trying that.
-Black socks with small white stripes might seem harmless, but they seem egregious to others.
-The slight smell of body odor is not enough of a requirement to remove all the ribbons and rank in order to wash the shirt. The threshold is somewhere between slight and obvious.
-While the military projects a tough demeanor, they like to play dress up more than runway models.
-Driving to work in the morning with the uniform on while drinking coffee is unfortunately the most dangerous part of the day.
-Pockets do not have a straight edge.
-Unbuttoning 13 buttons to use the bathroom.
-Pulling shirt stays around your hips to sit and use the bathroom.
-Service uniforms are more about exposing fat people than they are about anything else.
-The only people who really know what the ribbons signify… are other military people.
-A guy can gain perspective about what it feels like to have someone look at his chest.
-Avoided working out because there is too much coordination required with a service uniform change in the gym.
-Off limits… perfectly usable… pockets.
-You have at least one Ricky Bobby moment a day because without the ability to use pockets… you don’t know what to do with your hands.
-Looking ridiculous by placing stuff in your sock because you don’t want to use your pockets.
-Using your back pocket for a wallet, which carries an ID required for computer access 100 times a day… and being corrected for the back button of your pants not securely fastened.
-An 1/8 of an inch seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
-Breathing may be less important than looking good.
-Trying to place rank parallel to the deck seems like a bad joke.
-Wearing a seat belt might save lives, but it destroys ribbon racks.
-Placing fingers on the bridge of your nose so that you know where to place your cover.
-Calling a hat a cover.
-Calling a hat a piss cutter.
-Placing your service cover on backwards and realizing that military members are not very understanding.
-Carefully examining your service cover when you place it on your head as you walk outside so that you don’t place it on backwards… again.
-Buckling the belt on your pants and then measuring the extra belt material.
-After avoiding weekend duty, realizing your mistake when you show up for taco Tuesday in uniform.
-Realizing the guy who has the most squared away uniform, is not usually the best operator in the field… despite how much our drill instructors try to convince us otherwise.
-Not placing another ribbon on your rack because it’s too much work to buy another backing and update the entire thing.
-Getting really frustrated when you rate the Joint Meritorious Unit Award because the ribbon is slightly larger than the rest and really messes up your rack.
-Trying on multiple T-Shirts because the neck seems too saggy with each one you try on.
-Realizing the neck of a T-Shirt is maybe the most important part of the shirt.
-Getting stabbed in the neck by the white insert part of a dress uniform. No that’s not a hickey… I wore my dress uniform last night.
-Getting confused with awards that require right to left coordination (combat action ribbon, oak leafs, etc.). There is a difference in right/left from the perspective of wearing it vs. looking at it worn, which should be easy to understand…
-Every time you go from sitting to standing there is this readjusting of the shirt/pant tuck as if it’s some nervous tick all military members have.
-Looking at another person with a flawless skin tight shirt, and wondering why after strapping your shirt with 13 shirt stays… you still have two distinct wrinkles.
-Standing up in a meeting to brief and having someone point out a problem with your uniform.
-Spending the rest of the meeting thinking of ways to get even with the person who called you out.
-Asking a pilot about strike flight numerals on their ribbons, being handed a complex formula about sorties, and then realizing pilots don’t even understand.
-Being told you don’t rate the award because you were just doing your job in an above average manner.
-Watching others get an award because they were just doing their job in a below average manner.
-Reading a silver star award citation from Iraq that is ten times more impressive than an old medal of honor citation.
-Reading the Sergeant’s achievement medal with “V” and realizing it’s more impressive than the bronze star received by the Battalion Commander.
-Reading an old award citation hanging in the company office, realizing it is full of grammatical errors, and then hating yourself because grammar is what you noticed.
-Finding any reason to go to the field so that you don’t have to wear the service uniform.
-Arguing that 10% chance of rain is validation to wear cammies.
-Putting a dress uniform back on while hungover the next day because you either forgot a change of clothes, or woke up in a location that didn’t have them.
-Going through the pain of bringing dress uniforms on a deployment, having them consume a portion of your tiny personal space, and then never wearing them.
-Going through the right of passage of having your uniform tailored. This is a nice way of saying you’re getting fatter and older.
If you have other reasons please comment them below.
