Reading this post about saying dumb shit to senior officers reminded me that I had once done something similar, except stupider.

There was this one Major-General - let's call him Maj. Gen. Scowly. This guy was genuinely hard-case. He'd served in Vietnam and had left the place profoundly fucked up; he'd fought through a lot of political bullshit he didn't have the patience for; was also the most brilliant man I've ever met in my life.

The first time I met him I was a tiny piddling little thing in the first year of the military. So there I was, no shit, standing in a line of other squeakers on our first parade, watching this Major General walk down the line inspecting each of us. He had a stare like a buzz-saw.

Anyway, the inevitable happened. He chose me to stop in front of and give that weird small-talk chit-chat thing Officers have with you when you're rigidly at attention and everyone is uncomfortable. None of this "how's the morale?" crap for my General Scowly though - he stared at me for about fifteen of the longest seconds of my life, leaned real close and said dead quietly "are you afraid of me, OCDT Crossy?"

I opened my mouth to say something dumb like NZ soldiers don't feel fear. What came out was a prompt and clear "Yes Sir."

He actually looked a bit surprised. "Why are you afraid of me, OCDT?"

"Your eyebrows Sir. They're very bushy Sir, and it is difficult to tell when you're angry."

You know that Capt who walks around behind a general looking kind of like the trophy wife at a political rally? That Capt looked torn between amazement, amusement, and wanting to murder me. The General actually just kind of blinked at me and moved on.

He remembered me though. Learned more from him in the time I knew him than I have learned from anyone else, before or since. He was a great man, with a great sense of humour, and very bushy eyebrows that made him look angry all the time, even when he thought something was hilarious.

And that was the time I fucked up epically and got away with it.