Good Times

Source

Thursday, the first of the so-called “crazy days” leading up to Lent, is known as Weiberfastnacht or the Women's Carnival, where women cut off men's ties as a symbol of power reversal. The women sometimes reward obliging men with a bützchen, or friendly peck on the cheek, a less common tradition today. Source (You can also read about it in more detail here.)

So yes, Thursday, Lincoln's Birthday, was Altweiberfastnacht. (I think the "Alt" part of the name was lost to political correctness some time ago, as it means "old," just like no one says "Fräulein" any more. Modern times, yuck.) I saw mention of this on the internet on Friday, brought back a memory it did. Of the old days. (Hhmm, mentioning the "old days" and Germany in the same context is problematic, innit?)

Anyhoo.

There I Was ...

Sitting at my desk at Geilenkirchen AB, Germany, compiling a bunch of C++ code as I recall. It was a large-ish program and compiling and linking all of it took some semi-lengthy amount of time. Perhaps 30 minutes or so. Then if something is amiss, you fix it and start over again.

Normally (normalerweise, auf Deutsch) I would occupy my time during a long compile by playing cards (FreeCell to be precise) on the computer while monitoring progress. One Altweiberfastnacht (I believe it was 1999, some three months prior to retiring from the Air Force) I was doing just that. While doing so, a band of celebrants of the female variety entered my office on a mission to cut the ties off of any man they encountered.

As I normally wore my BDUs¹ to work, having occasion to sometimes crawl about the lab and other places where computer equipment was in use to check on cables (which the cleaning staff would sometimes inadvertently unhook or otherwise cause to lose connectivity) and having once destroyed a rather pricey pair of uniform pants doing that, I felt justified in doing so. (My colonel once chided me for that, after explaining myself, he relented, in fact he started wearing his BDUs to work as well. Now it seems to be all the rage.)

Long story short, one does not wear a tie with BDUs, now on Altweiberfastnacht the ladies, especially the European ones, get annoyed if one does not wear a tie so that they can destroy it, so I adopted the expedient of fashioning a false tie out of cardboard and affixing that to my attire in lieu of wearing an actual tie, which would get destroyed. Not being made of money, as the saying goes, I did not wish to lose a tie once a year. So ...

Anyhoo, long story short ...

I'm sitting at my desk, monitoring my compile job and having a game of FreeCell when I hear the clamor of a group of females approaching my position. When they entered I presented my fake tie for destruction which some of the ladies (the Europeans) chuckled at, as they knew me well by this point, this being my 8th Altweiberfastnacht. They snipped it and prepared to move on to find their next victim when one paused, looked at my computer screen, then looked at me. I should note that this lady was an American captain (O-3 Air Force type, not O-6 Navy type).

"Playing games on Air Force time?" she asked in a semi-serious tone.

"I'm compiling ma'am, while I'm compiling I play FreeCell. And yes, I'm compiling on Air Force time, as well as playing a game."

"Hhmm, that seems less than professional."

I realized at that point that she might be serious after all, it seems to be a habit of our non-rated officers to be somewhat, shall we say, pretentious. As a senior noncommissioned officer, I felt it was my duty to respond in a corrective manner.

"Perhaps ma'am, but maybe just as professional as running around the building cutting off ties."

At which the European ladies all had a good laugh and our young captain blushed mightily, realizing the absurdity of her position. The ladies left without further ado.

When the compile was done, I went and picked up The Missus Herself and went to join the festivities at the club on base. Fun times were had, no ties were harmed on my part.

I miss Germany at times.

Good times.

¹ Battle Dress Uniform, or BDUs for short.