Lieutenant Rolie McManly is having a bad day, thinking his dirty little sissy secret is out, and not knowing who knows what. A good solid breakfast is what he needs, that and a couple of aspirin for this **** hangover headache that is beating on his brain like a lead filled baby rattle. All appears normal as Rolie enters the officers mess hall and takes a table by himself off to the side.
A WM (Woman Marine) corporal comes to his table and takes his order: bacon and eggs over easy, dry toast, OJ and coffee. Rolie asked the WM if she had some aspirin and was assured she would bring some when she brought his coffee. “So far, so good” thought Rolie, starting to relax a bit.
The Corporal returned with a glass of water, a cup of coffee and two chewable, orange flavored St. Joseph’s aspirin for children. Rolie sat upright with a start, his hair standing on end! “What is this?” barked the Lieutenant, “I wanted some asprin!” The WM replied coolly with a big smile, “I take one of these children’s aspirin a day for aspirin therapy” she responded, “It’s the only kind of aspirin I have but it should help”
Rolie heard a snicker from behind him. He turned around to see a table of WM officers eating breakfast, to his great relief they seemed oblivious to him. Rolie turned back to the WM and said, “Thank you Corporal, this will suffice.” He heard another stifled giggle. His internal dialog contradicted the calm expression on his face. “Was the child’s aspirin a coincidence? Is she one of the ‘we’? How many does a ‘we’ make? Who the hell is giggling and why?”
By the time the Corporal returned, the aspirin was indeed helping and the breakfast smelled delicious. Rolie put his cloth napkin on his lap, took a sip of coffee and prepared to dig in. With a start Rolie realized that the bacon and eggs were formed into a smiling happy face on his plate and he quickly shook the plate so the face fell apart. He heard some laughter from across the room but a furtive glance sideways reveled only people chatting during breakfast. It was surely just a random arrangement of the bacon and eggs, please let it be. “Just let me get through breakfast” grimaced the nervous Marine to himself.
Rolie picked up his toast to help push a bit of egg onto his fork and jerked back dropping everything. There was an image of a smiling flower pressed onto the bread in the manner that mothers do for their children to make breakfast more fun. Rolie’s hair stood up on his neck and god****it he heard snickering again. Rolie recovered quickly and resumed eating like nothing happened but his stomach was starting to sour now. This had to be too much to be a coincidence!
The WM server returned to freshen his coffee and Rolie flatly asked her about the toast. “Oh, you got that?” She responded with a straight face. “That was supposed to go to the CO’s daughter, sorry”. Rolie looked across the room and saw a sleepy little girl of about 5 years sitting at the table with the Commanding Officer and his wife. Rolie sighed deeply and waved her off. Is his mind playing tricks on him? Is something up? Rolie reached for his drink without looking and put it to his lips. Tasting milk he jumped out of his reverie with a start and stared wide eyed at the container in his trembling hand. It was a toddler’s sippy cup decorated with Disney characters. Little Mermaid on one side, Cinderella on the other.
“OH HEAVENS!” Rolie said aloud. The diners at the tables around him turned to look. Rolie quickly rose and left the mess hall. As he was leaving he heard a few people laughing here and there along his exit route, probably about anything but holy crap it might be about him! But his heart absolutely stopped and turned to ice when he swore he heard the muffled words, “rumba panties”. He could not exit fast enough.
Rolie’s face shown bright red as he made his way to his duty station, the base laundry. In route each person who walked by had their face and expression covertly examined in minute detail by the distraught Marine. Who all knows? All of that was way way too much to be just a simple coincidence. That Corporal had to be in on it, one of the “we” no doubt. Rolie didn’t know her, it being a very large military base, but he was afraid that this wasn’t over yet. In fact he had a very very bad feeling that this was just getting started.
