I used to work with a fella who was quite a sportsman. Unfortunately, his health wasn't too good.
He was always off work sick....
on opening day of trout season....
on opening day of turkey season....
on opening day of deer season....
on opening day of salmon fishing....
on opening day of duck season....
on opening day of ......you name it, he called in sick!

Life is just full of coincidences, isn't it?

My first day ever on the rig, when they thought that I knew hardly anything about it, the other hands told me that it was my job to check the 'water table' up on the crown. "It's about five gallons low, so you'd better fill a bucket and take it up with you".

That's a long ladder to climb when you're carrying a 5 gallon bucket of water, but I already knew the game. My Dad had been a roughneck for years. I took the bucket up about 20 feet and dumped it. They were able to avoid most of the water, but it was fun watching them scramble!

In todays workplace, horseplay can get you fired fast - but back then on the rig, it was the order fo the day! I have a few stories...

Spring has sprung and fall has fell.
This summer's gonna be as hot as ............

"How do you get a second year college psychology student off of your front porch?

Just pay for the pizza and close the door... he'll leave.."

After the collapse of crude oil prices, they used to tell the same joke, substituting in petroleum engineers.

I'd like to be able to tell that joke, substituting in "politician" for "second year college student".

For anyone who doesn't know, drilling mud isn't like the stuff you played in when you were a kid. It's (usually) a water-based soup of chemicals. I've heard of, but never seen oil-based drilling mud. It looks a lot like mud (hence the name), and has about the consistency of tomato soup. Among other things, the pH is carefully controlled, and so is the weight (the specific gravity). Back in the early days of oil drilling, a successful well resulted in a gusher. That's rare now, as we anticipate the pressure that the underground crude is under, and additives are mixed into the mud to make it heavier so that the weight of the column of mud in the well bore will result in a pressure at the bottom of the hole that is close to what's expected in the oil vein. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's enough. "mud" isn't really mud.

About Adam and Eve, the snake, and being thrown out of the garden:

I was small when I learned that. My response was "You mean, if they'd have left the apple alone, we'd all still be able to run around naked and no one would have to wear clothes?? GEE, I wish they'd have ignored the snake!!!"

It's pretty common if you have a toddler, to notice that he's shed all his clothes. You'd have to go find them and put them back on him. When I was a toddler, I used to HIDE my clothes so that Mom couldn't put them back on me.

I haven't changed all that much. ....trouble is, I don't look good naked any more.

Actually - when you get old, your doctor puts so many restrictions on your diet that dog food might look like a big treat!

When I was little, we always had a box of "Friskies fives" dog biscuits for our dog. I thought that the reddish ones tasted best. Or, should I say 'less bad'? How good something tastes depends a lot on how hungry you are!

As you mentioned, none of us had ever heard of a country called Vietnam. In that timeframe, wasn't the world calling it "French IndoChina"?

Hold my beer and watch this!

I worked for 26 years installing and maintaining weather sensor systems. In all that time, I learned only two things about the weather:
1) Lightning makes up an entire new set of rules about its effects for every strike.
2) The wind is a WOMAN. ....Always changing its mind!

Some years back, I bought a fixer upper with an 85 HP Merc on it. It was an enjoyable project, and I still have that boat.

I've been knocked up.
...at a hotel in London. At 6 AM.
It wasn't as enjoyable as being knocked up the way some of you are thinking.

Here's something to know about your clavicle: When I was a fireman, one of the guys broke his collarbone by trying to bust open a door with his shoulder the way they do it on TV. Your shoulder is attached to your body only by your collarbone and your shoulder blade. The shoulder blade isn't attached to anything else, just embedded in muscle. So attacking a door with your shoulder is a BAD idea.

When I was a toddler, I was using my folks' bed for a trampoline. Bounced up and then on the way down, I tumbled off the edge. Broke a collarbone.