Sounds of Afghanistan

I am oblivious - at least in my normal life. I am the type of person that will drive a road 10 times before I notice a huge billboard has been put up, or that they started building a store on an empty lot. That trait doesn't serve me all that well when I am home, and here, it's damn near a death wish. I changed in a hurry once I got here, and now I think I am at the other extreme.

The only good thing about being at the other extreme, is that sometimes you are validated in your paranoia. It was about midnight and I was getting ready for bed a couple nights ago and heard what I thought sounded like a muffled explosion. Usually, I'd ignore this, at least old Gary would. New Gary listens intently. Anyway, I listened again and heard it again, so I walked over to Steve who was still up and asked him if he heard it, he waited and did. Then he said he had heard the first two, but didn't think much of it. We decided to go outside at which point, there were about 12 of us out there because we all "heard it". The other guys were all Marines, and typical of Marines, they hear explosions, they start running towards them. Gotta love the Marines. The one guy who is a senior enlisted Marine and a good guy said, "Sounds like incoming", like its no big deal. Gotta love Marines. Yeah, it did, thats why we were outside in shorts, although come to think of it, that was a bad idea. So much for the helmet under my bed. We all sorta walked towards the direction of the "incoming" and figured out it definitely wasn't landing in the camp, and didn't appear to be landing on the ANA side either. I think it was hitting the range or the mountains that are just to our north. Either way, sometimes I hear stuff, and walk outside and I am by my lonesome, obviously, no one else "heard it". This time though, I was secure in my paranoia. The only problem around here though is that we also have a tank range and quarry really close, so there is a constant stream of explosions, you just have to learn to pick out the bad from the benign.

A few weeks back, another incident happened that DIDN'T need clarification. I was walking to lunch and I hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet ricocheting off of metal. Turns out an ANA guy was cleaning his gun over the road (loaded mind you), it went off, fired a few rounds, one hitting his buddy in the head and at least one of the others landing on our side of the wall. Nice. He didn't kill the other guy, just grazed him, but amazingly, they give these guys bullets. Hopefully HIS mentor taught him the value of unloading his weapon before cleaning it.

Who knows if my obliviousness (is that a word) will wear off when I get home, I have a sneaking feeling it will.

Gary