Blowing church doors off

  • Published
  • By Col. "Tip" Stinnette
  • 39th Air Base Wing commander
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Alfred had trouble with termites at home. He heard that natural gas was dangerous, and figured it would be a good, low-cost way to fumigate his house. So he shut the doors and windows, turned on the gas, and spent the night in a nearby camper trailer with his wife. The next morning he stepped out of the trailer, took a breath of crisp, cool air, and strode over to his house.

When he opened the door, the slight spark from the latch ignited the cloud of natural gas that had accumulated in his home. The force of the explosion blew him off the porch and into a nearby creek, knocked out the town's telephones and electricity, and blew the doors off a church. It rattled the windows six miles away. Alfred was evacuated by helicopter with severe burns to the burn unit in a nearby town. His house was uninsured. It is presumed that the fumigation was effective.

Things that make you go hmmm. While I dig these stories up from The Darwin Awards I could easily regale you with stories from our own backyard here at Incirlik. The ingenuity of our species is truly something to marvel and behold. I believe the anecdote to stupid human tricks is multidimensional fitness. We have discussed this before...the cultivating of physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. Each of these components represents a major muscle that requires exercising. Just like the athlete who hits all the stops in the fitness center to exercise the different muscles of the body so should we seek to address and exercise the physical, mental, and spiritual wellness of our being. The cost of inattention to these components of our being is like the accumulation of termites in our house which erode the structure below the surface. As Alfred learned fumigation can be more explosive than mere maintenance.

Rather than blowing the doors off a church, nearly drowning in a creek, and knocking out the electricity with one fumigating explosion, maybe we should seek to regularly exercise our spirit, body, and mind and think of it as an investment and inoculation against becoming one of the few that grace the pages of the Darwin Awards. Something to ponder as we work together to ensure freedom's future.