Flu Shot




"Is it possible that you could avoid stabbing me hard
enough to draw blood this time, doc?"
"Is it possible for you to shut your noise tube, Cav Scout?
You're the 4000th lucky winner we've vaccinated today in
the Regiment."

The process of getting a flu shot every year in the Army is always a debacle. In the past, I have avoided the flu shot because I hate needles, and I’m waiting for the inevitable results to come out in the Washington Times that all of our Army vaccinations will turn us into zombies someday. This year, under threat of being denied my 4-day pass to Washington for the Army Ten Miler by my boss, I willingly went to receive my zombie vaccine. The threat went something like this actually…

“Wings, if you don’t go get your flu shot, I will lock you in a closet with a poisonous snake. The guy who does the CATS management job can take over arguing with the Maneuver and Fires Centers about CAS and CCA.”

Then I was all like, “well, he doesn’t have the legs for it.” And my boss beat his head against a wall for an hour at the futility of arguing with my superior intellect.**

It’s not that getting the flu shot is bad, but it’s not fun either. You fill out some papers about medical history, are selected for  zombie testing  vaccination by people with rubber gloves, and then tortured actively by these fellow service members who are supposed to care for your medical health and well-being. This feeling of betrayal is made even worse when the person holding the needle is a friend. You search their eyes for pity, but they’re so far beyond pity because you’re the 4000th lucky winner in the Division that they’ve  tortured  vaccinated today. As you cower into the shoulder of the person standing next to you awaiting their vaccination, pleading with your medic friend for a reprieve from the abuse, he points surreptitiously to the group standing across from you: the ones getting the flu mist. He then asks if you’d “like to take your chances with them instead?” You watch as the other line of subjects gets a tube shoved in their nose with a command to “inhale deeply” from the SSG Ratched, who's giving them the nasal spray vaccination. They walk away from their ordeal rubbing at their nose like cocaine addicts after a line in the dirty bathroom of a seedy New Orleans strip club.

*whimper* “No, thank you, Sergeant.”

This year I managed to maintain a stiff upper lip and got my flu shot in a timely manner. Frankly, my medical condition that prohibits me from getting the flu mist, is actually kind of handy.

Conversely, the whole Gunnery Branch made it look like the 80’s were back, baaybee.

** this argument may not have actually happened like that per se… because we have a new division chief in the Penthouse. Nevertheless, I am taller than he is and have about 15 or 20 pounds on him. I’m pretty sure I can take him.