For those that can’t read the image:
>playing some mtg with my college group that meets up at my best friend's every friday
>one of the players asks if his friend can join next time we play
>nobody has a problem with it
>next friday rolls around
>everybody gets set up
>knock on the door
>best friend opens the door
>immediate regret
>actual fucking fecal smell emanates from this mass of unkempt hairy adipose
>try my god damndest to be polite and try to ignore the smell and just play.
>he picks up the game pretty quickly, and thankfully he doesn't speak too often because each time he opens his mouth the halitose burns my nostrils.
>we tolerate this for exactly 10 minutes before the poli-sci dude in our group slams his can of altoids on the plaguelord's side of the table and blurts "do not fucking speak in my direction again until you've fucking emptied this your breath smells like death."
>dead fucking silence for 10 seconds.
>plaguelord gets up, apologizes, and leaves
>we try to pretend this never happened.
>next week rolls around, its still on everyone's mind.
>knock on the door
>takes a few moments to recognize the stranger in front of us
>holy shit its the plaguelord, and he's fucking clean
>completely shaved his patchy neckbeard
>is wearing what looks like a brand new clothes, his jeans even still have a sticker on them
>smells vaguely like strawberries instead of rotten onions
>teeth still stained but the halitose is completely gone and replaced with mint.
>apologized for last week, asked if he could play again
>fast forward a few months and now he's a regular at our table, he even brings homemade snacks.
Has this ever happened in your groups or is this some sort of anomaly/divine intervention?
Yeah, fairly similar.
Dude worked with me and two of my players (not mtg, but ttrpg) at a fast food joint back when we were still in high school, and right after.
Guy was dumb as a brick, but just genuinely nice. Always willing to help people out with whatever.
But he was couch surfing. And he’d never had good hygiene (we find out later) because his family were almost homeless, and rarely had fancy things like running water.
His teeth were literally green.
He starts playing d&d and my home brew system with us. Again, dumb as a brick, but he’s totally into it, does voices, physically acts things out, just straight baller of a player, the kind that keeps a table on a good vibe.
But Jesus fucking Christ, the smell of the guy. And his skin was horrible on top of that.
Me and one of my friends took him aside after work and talked to him about it. Me being me, I was pretty blunt. Said something like, dude, we love playing with you, you’re a great guy, but I’ve smelled rotten skunk that smelled better; what’s the deal?
He was pretty ashamed, but me and my homie reassured him that we liked him anyway, and wanted to help.
Well, dude didn’t really have a place, and had to limit himself to one bag. So we talked to my dad, and another friend’s dad. Got permission for the guy to shower at our places here and there.
I was a nurse’s assistant, got my certification during this time, and ended up having to teach the guy how to take care of himself. It was a bit weird, but as he started getting cleaner, feeling more confident, he’d open up about things. Dude didn’t know how to wash his dick properly. So my freshly 18 year old self had to instruct this mid twenties dude in how to keep his junk clean lol. Nobody else involved really knew how to teach someone stuff they took for granted, but I’d had to kinda relearn all the hygiene stuff from a new perspective, so it was easy.
Anyway, a few months into this, and he’s looking better, smelling a lot better, and lands an assistant manager position because of it. I mean, it’s fast food, so it’s a shit job, but it was a big step up for him. And it came with insurance (amazingly), so he started getting his teeth fixed up a little at a time.
About a year and a half passes, and he meets this girl at a party we were throwing. Not exactly a friend, but known to us. She sees him and gets all flustered, red faced and stuttering. Turns out, he cleans up pretty good. He’s smiling a lot more because he’s not hiding his teeth. He’s got better clothes, his own place, he’s a new guy from the outside, but still this awesome dude inside.
About a year later, they’re married. Me and the ttrpg group are all standing with him, the second of any of us to get married, and the first not to elope lol.
A little over a year after that, he’s got a kid new born, and is a regional manager. Still dumb as a brick, but because he’s able to follow instructions and the company had good ones, it’s something he can do well. Plus, everybody that worked under him loved the guy because he was still just righteous.
They ended up moving to Colorado for her job, and he was stay at home dad for a while. We kinda lost touch except for the occasional email or call, but they were happy and doing fine the last time we caught up.
There’s no real moral to all of that, but it was similar enough to the greentext I figured it might be of minor interest.
I’ll say this much; it never hurts to try reaching out to someone.
When I was serving in the US military, we were given extremely strict official regulations to live by, which included dress and appearance. There were rules for how long your hair could be, how to properly button/zip/Velcro your uniforms, no wearing of dirty or torn clothing items, must be clean shaven at all times, always be clean and presentable, etc. All aspects of our lives were maintained by an extremely strict protocol.
One year, we got this brand-new young lady in our unit. It was her very first assignment in the military. At first glance, she was kinda cute. Had kind of the shy Violet from The Incredibles vibe going for her. But when she got close to you, you suddenly realized you could smell her. She reeked of feces and B.O., her breath was like death, and her hair was super greasy and clumped into thick strands. Her pale skin had a greasy sheen to it as well. Also, her hair was out of regulations. She wore it hanging straight down, no bobby pins, no buns or ponytails or braids. It was heavily brushing her shoulders; way too long for women’s hair. Hair that long (at the time) was required to be up in a tight bun while in uniform. Also, her uniform hat had very visible grease stains along the edges.
She was pulled aside by our commander and chewed out for not adhering to military regulations, then told to go home, shower, fix her hair (or get a haircut; her choice), and put on a fresh, clean uniform. She left crying.
Soon after, our commander (a Major) got a call from a Colonel at another base. The Colonel proceeded to chew out our commander for “targeting, harassing, and destroying the reputation” of his baby sister. Oops. A Colonel outranks a Major, so our commander couldn’t do anything but take the ass-chewing.
From that moment on, that young girl proceeded to be gross and filthy 24/7, and anyone who complained got an earful from her big brother. No one could reason with him; he absolutely refused to believe his darling baby sister would be such a pigsty. And he was stationed in a completely different country from us, so it’s not like we could drag him over to give his sister a welfare check. We were forced to leave her alone and suffer from her horrid stench. She was given a job in the back corner of the office, away from other coworkers, and FAR away from the customer front desk.
That was about 9 years ago, and I only worked with her for just under a year before I was reassigned. I wonder where she is now? I’m curious if she was ever forced to acknowledge her awful hygiene habits and change. Or perhaps she couldn’t tolerate the “abuse” of bosses and coworkers trying to correct her and decided to leave the military.
Like I said, she was pretty cute, if you could look past all the grime. There was a theory floating around that maybe she had been abused and/or raped in the past, and so she decided to protect herself by making herself as filthy and unappealing as possible. If that’s true, it worked. Everyone gave her a wide berth.
Given that each year 30,000 or 8% of US military women experience abuse and your first reaction to this person working as a professional killer with you was “she’s cute”, it sounds like her ploy worked perfectly.
professional killer
We were Air Force, not Marines. Specifically, we worked as IT professionals. So if anything, we were professional nerds, not professional killers.
I deployed with Marines once. My Marine boss said she hoped to god that she never saw an Air Force member with a gun. That would mean the planes are down, the base is overrun, and the Marines are dead. She said we were the absolute last resort. So she told me that if shit hit the fan, I should hand my weapon to the nearest Marine and hide under my desk until it’s over.
Still, you’re correct. There was a surprisingly high rate of abuse and harassment of women across the military. My wife also served, and she got plenty of harassment from her peers. Even some guys that didn’t think being married prevented them from trying to date her. And there were always stories of people cheating while on deployments. Guys got especially horny on deployment because they were trapped on a military base for 6+ months and there were very few women deployed with them, if any at all.
Early in my career, the guys would joke about the 2-10-2 rule: while at our home station, women they worked with might be only a 2 on the hotness scale, but when you’re deployed and had no other options, they’d become a 10. Then you return home and they’re back to a 2. They also referred to this as "deployment goggles " (like beer goggles).
The Air Force specifically made great strides in cutting down on abuse of women. We sat through training courses annually, talking about abuse and harassment and how to respect your peers. The culture shifted greatly from when I signed up in 2002, to when I retired in 2022, and we were at a very good place when I left.
I hear the worst branches to serve as a woman are the Marines and Army. They also made great strides over the years, but they still have a much more toxic culture than we do. Heck, there was big news in 2020 about an Army woman being murdered and dismembered because she didn’t accept advances from a co-worker. They actually made a Netflix special about her. So they still have lots of work to do. But their culture in general is very toxic, not just against women, but everyone. They abuse the hell out of their members, treating them like govt property, not human beings. So until they can shift their mindset and start respecting their people as living, breathing people and not tools to be utilized, I don’t see them improving their respect of women anytime soon.
