"Tactical Crouch"

I was going to start this post with something like "you may not know this, but.." but given that all 7.5 of my readers have either known me for at least 5 years and/or are related to me, I realized it would just end up making me look stupid. So, I've changed the beginning.

You probably know this already, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

My brother, whom I love and adore is called Joe. As in G.I. This name was given to him by a family friend who could not pronounce his given name. (and, in the spirit of The Neverending Story, and also a small measure of Hopeful Delusions that Someone Not Related to Me is Reading This, I'm going to let you guess at his given name.) Anyway, the name stuck and is completely appropriate, because Joe is currently a part of Army ROTC. And he loves it. Everything about it. The physical stuff (18.7 mile ruck march in under 5 hours? Bring it.) The thinking aspect ("So then I had my team split in half and we covered the area and....") and yes, of course, the BLOWING UP OF THINGS ("dude, today we learned how to use nylons and hair gel to blow up an enemy tank").
Not a day goes by that I don't hear some story about who blew up what or what The Major did way back when. (The Major, by the way, is akin to Hercules.) What's nice about this scenario, is that Joe is very good at this ROTC thing. He is excelling at it. They get graded on various aspects of the things they do. It's a pretty interesting grading system: E = Excelling. N = Needs Improvement, and a few others, I think. He's learning information that we mere mortals could not handle knowing (seriously, our brains might explode) and he's developing habits which would not occur to we lowly civilians to develop. Enter the "Tactical Crouch" and the following story:

Our story begins last night around 9 pm. I had convinced Joe to go for a walk with me and my dog. It wasn't hard to convince him, because he doesn't like me walking around by myself after dark. Sweet, huh? Anyway, we went walking. Diesel and Me, Joe and Achilles (his hound dog, who, incidentally is my dog's brother). We were walking through our neighborhood and paid no attention to a car that went past us. Until.

POW POW
My reaction: Whoa! Scary sounds! (N for assessing)
Joe's reaction: Tactical Crouch.* (E for assessing, N for loyalty)
Me: What are you...oh! were those gun shots?
Joe: yep, it was a pistol.
Car: pulling ever so slowly and nonchalantly down the road. (N for not realizing that they should be DRIVING FASTER!!!!)
Neighbors: What the....?
Me: We need to call 911
Joe: Huh? Oh, yeah.
Me: do you know what kind of car it was?
Joe: yep it was a late 80s, early 90s corolla or civic. white. (E for observation)
Me: Awe and shock at his observation skills.
911: ok, we'll send someone.
10 minutes later: Way cool Helicopter shows up on search pattern. Police cruiser follows shortly.
Neighbor: look I found the shells. (E for finding things)
Cop: There was another shooting matching this description just a few minutes ago.
5 minutes later
Me: So, I guess you won't be letting me walk by myself at night ever again, huh? (E for predicting the future)
Joe: Nope.

So, yeah. weird scary incident, huh? It's a good thing Joe was there, because I never would have even thought it was gun shots...I would have assumed it was a noise maker of some kind. In fact, I did assume that very thing until they found the empty shells. Good thing Joe was there.

* Note: The "Tactical Crouch" was not accompanied by screaming, crying or pleading of any kind. Nor did he try to hide behind me or the dog. Nor did he try to push me in the way of the bullets. However, he did not try to protect me, which is where the LOYALTY issue comes in.
To be fair, he was a pretty upset about not protecting me, but then, in the most amazing bout of turnabout I've ever seen, he managed to make it not only NOT his fault, but the Army's fault and My fault as well. Observe:
Joe: I'm sorry I didn't protect you.
Me: Whatever
Joe: Well, I was trained that when you hear gun shots, you move. Don't just stand there. So, I dropped into a tactical crouch. It's not my fault. Blame the army.
Me: tactical crouch?!
Joe: You should have done it too. It's not my fault you didn't.
Me: ...
Joe gets an E for "Deflecting the Blame."

Go Army.


Seriously though, God Bless our Troops. And thank you.