BARTERING DEALS

if there's one thing that i hate in this world, its running...... i just cant stand it.... its the most monotonous, mundane, useless waste of time in the world to me.... right off the bat i know what lot of you reading this will think..... "hes in the army right..... don't they run a lot"? sure..... we run, and i will point out that i don't have any problem passing a PT test..... its just the act of running that kills me..... one step after another for God knows how long..... i would rather watch grass grow..... but no, life can never be that simple...... in 2 days there are two VOLUNTARY runs scheduled on the FOB..... one is a 6.6 miler, and the other a 10 miler...... we are encouraged to participate in them..... my answer to this was easy.... NO...... but of course if its not one thing its another..... I'm not afforded the luxury of an easy answer..... not because its being mandated to me..... or because something favorable hangs in the balance of my decision......no..... my fucking soldier wants to run, and knowing how much i hate running, he wants me to run with him...... Yeah, what an asshole right..... me being the NCO that i am i cant just say to him " get bent tool bag" because then i look like the tool.... i also cant politely said no..... here is a soldier who wants to participate in an event that's productive and legitimate..... flat out saying no to him even while knowing that his request is only extended to piss me off, in my mind would be wrong..... BUT I'M NOT GOING TO RUN EITHER OF THESE FUCKING RUNS......

what to do.... what to do......

in my mind the only option or way to approach this would be to offer him something that's more enticing to him, then me running with him..... that's the only way i can keep my " i not fucking running plan", and have him not hold that over me in the future..... now the question becomes what would be more valuable to a pv2........ it cant be something like money.... i cant buy my way out..... i would still look like a tool bag, just poorer..... it also cant be time off or favorable action..... anything like that would constitute an abuse of power on my end and would be unfair to the soldiers that don't want to run as well as the soldiers that do.......

this is what i came up with...... wait..... first i want to say that after giving this very little thought i decided that i wanted him to win this deal.... i designed it so that he could win..... what i offer was that if he does both runs (which are on the same day), then for 20 minutes, in front of the whole squad, with cameras arolling..... he can smoke the piss out of me...... i said that i would push, hop, skip, jump rope, whatever it is that he wants me to do...... i will do all of this with a smile on my face and a sense of pride in my soldier.... i will have my canteen out there and he can smoke the hell out of me.....

he absolutely loved this idea..... he was tickled pink.... the fact that i offered this to him..... i offered to let him do it in front of the whole squad, film it, and on top of that i said to him that i don't care if he walks the whole way.... as long as he starts both and finishes both on the same day then he owns my ass for 20 minutes...... i know he wont walk the whole way but 16.6 miles for someone who hasn't trained for it is a long as fucking way..... i don't want him to fail..... i didn't want him to think that if he needed to walk that he would lose.... i wanted him to know that i want him to succeed..... he is a very prideful person.... i know he will run as much of it as he can..... I've never seen a pvt smoke a sgt before.... and i know he will love and remember the day he got to smoke his team leader.......

to me its a win win for both of us..... he gets something better then he originally requested and i get the pride that comes along with having a soldier complete 16.6 miles...... i also don't have to run the fucking thing..... as for the smoking.... i really don't care.... getting smoked wont bother me.... it will be all in good fun.... he will have fun with it and the squad will have fun with it..... the other soldiers will live vicariously through him and probably request exercises for him to make me do.... I'm game..... lol..... i think I'm actually looking forward to it.....