Birds Aren't Dumb: A Camo Story from the Farm to the Store

At the beginning of April, I was at a grocery store in the produce section where I'd just picked up some mango juice. About ten feet to my right, I noticed this tall black guy looking at some lettuce. He had on a camouflaged jacket and I had on camouflaged pants.

I strolled over to him and said, "Hey, buddy, you and I are each half of a GI Joe!"

He said, "What?"

 And I said, "We are both wearing camouflage clothing. Together we make a GI Joe."

He liked that and we laughed for a while.  He thanked me for the joke. Said it made his day. We went our separate ways, and I never saw him again.

I thought about that brief meeting, wondering about how I could use it in a blog. And while I could talk about characters getting together, sharing jokes, building relationships, instead talking about that, I decided to share the back-story of why I wear camouflaged pants.

I know it's rather mundane. But back stories are often mundane.  You see, I grew up on a family farm. And most days my pants were dirty, dusty, covered with oil, drease, and other chemicals such as splashed fuels. And after several washings, the smells were gone but the stains were there. So I shifted to camouflaged pants. Without the smells, people couldn't figure out what were the stains and what were the intentional camouflaged patterns. 

Plus, the pants are usually stronger and more comfortable than regular pants.

One of the things that I find hilariously funny are the hunters in the Fall who wear camouflaged clothing and black facial paint to hide themselves from the ducks, gueese, and pheasants they are hunting. Birds are not stupid. They can tell the difference between trees and clumps of brush that are stuck  in the ground and people pretending to be brush walking across fields and up dry hillsides.

Brush doesn't move. People do.