Nighttime Madness

12:35 - In other news last night was a pretty interesting evening. It all started normal enough, going to a lieutenant's party and DDing my "drunk as a skunk" posse back home. But around 4:30AM I hear multiple rings on the doorbell. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Pause. Ring, ring, ring, ring, riiiinnnnng. Pause. Repeat. Warren got to the door first and came in to tell Martin and I that it was one of his soldiers. It ended up being one of Martin's lieutenants trying to get a hold of Martin because he wasn't answering his phone. I had to wake Mart up by telling him that it was SIR time, which did the trick. (SIRs for anyone who doesn't know stands for "Severe Incident Report" and is a bunch of paperwork that has to be filled out when a soldier gets put into jail, gets pulled over for drinking, fights with his wife, or gets killed, among other equally lousy situation.) Turns out one of his soldiers, a corporal, was killed in a car accident while driving at alarming speeds in the boondocks of west Fort Hood in the early morning. Alcohol was involved.

Since Martin didn't have his phone at the house, we suspected that it was left behind at the party so we drove over there to find it and then go onto post to deal with the accident. Turns out everyone in that house sleeps like a zombie and we literally had to sneak into a back window to find Martin's phone. It was a little frightening because in Texas there is something known as the Castle Doctrine. Which goes a something like this (thank you Wikipedia!): "It then goes on to give a person the legal right to use deadly force to defend that place (his/her "castle"), and/or any other innocent persons legally inside it, from violent attack or an intrusion which may lead to violent attack." Basically, we were invading a castle and could have been shot. But no one woke up and we were on our not-so merry way to post.

The thing that sicks out most in my mind is that you can be here one minute and gone the next. No one wakes up and thinks "I'm going to get into a atrocious car accident today and die." And I wonder if you realize you are dead after you are dead. Seems sort of like a fair thing to do. At least be able to reflect on the fact that "Wow I'm dead." Maybe feel a little bit of remorse. My brain is so full of thoughts and ideas all the time that it would seem bizarre to suddenly be switched off. A constant stream of talking on this internal radio when suddenly there is silence. It is just such a sad thing when this happens. So undeserving and rotten.