*clears throat and gets into old grandfather/Lazarus mode*
Yes, my dear grandson, there was one other time.
Once when I was a lad, and still in the Marines, I was placed on watch by my sarge when behind enemy lines.
Now, mind you, I had been awake the entire previous night playing cards with my buddies. Needless to say, I was dead tired and not too pleased to be assigned this duty of watch. However, early on in boot camp I found out it's not the smartest thing in the world to question the orders of a superior officer (though that truly is another tale for another time). So, I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be going another night without sleep.
It was not that easy. More than once I had to poke myself with the end of my rifle (it had a bayonet attached, you see) to keep myself from nodding off into bliss. Yet even with numerous pokes and prods my sleepiness overcame my sense of duty, and I zonked out. And, if it weren't for my odd talent of being able to sleep with my eyes open, while sitting up, our entire platoon would have been destroyed.
See, roughly fifteen minutes after my lights went out a group of hippies came along. Not just ordinary hippies, mind you. These were
commando hippies. The most dangerous kind. The ones who have been known to wipe out entire armies with their flower-power.
They approached the camp, fully armed with all sorts of flowers, everything from roses to lilies, with the honest intent of turning our platoon of Marines into nothing more than flower-power-soldiers. Believe me, a fate worse than death (just imagine being darned to wonder the earth, dressed in hippie clothes with a Marine helmet... carrying a rifle with a flower sticking out of the barrel. Horrible, I tell you. Horrible)
So, they come up to my guard post and... stopped dead. They see these two glowing objects off to the side, and one of them shines a light in their direction (of course, those two glowing objects are my eyes, which, by the way, are red)... and, with the reflection of the light on my eyes... well, to the hippies it looked like a fire breathing dragon. Which isn't totally unbelievable, considering commando hippies are always high on something (it's the law in the hippie army). And of course, they run for their lives. Because we all know fire and flowers don't mix.
That was lame, I know.
