He was a devout Mormon, and relatively a nice person. I didn’t like him. I hated being on his team. Before I was stuck on the team, it was just him with Chad and Ryan. They were miserable under him but powerless. I stood up to him a little more and did things intentionally to piss him off. We didn’t get along at first.

I used to call him “Nebi”. It’s Arabic for “the Prophet”. It is used to specifically refer to the Prophet Muhammad. I called him that as a jab at his religion. Now, I’m not a bigot, and I don’t have a problem with any man’s chosen religion. However, it was the easiest target, and I’m the type of lazy guy that always goes for the low-hanging fruit. Levi’s last name was Smith. Therefore, by calling him the “Nebi” I was taking small jabs at him and making a play on words on his name at the same time. He was a Korean linguist and didn’t know. Ryan was an Arabic linguist, so he was in on it. Chad was a Korean linguist but we schooled him on the joke and he played along. In English, I always respected his religion. I always respect faith, no matter how I personally feel about their belief system. (This post isn’t about his faith, and I’m not trying to say anything bad about any of my readers who may be LDS).

I did things to irritate him intentionally. One of his biggest complaints was my cursing. I have a dirty mouth sometimes. Most soldiers use bad language. Around him, I became an artist. I went out of my way to say things that would get a movie an “R” rating instead of a “PG-13”. He would cringe and forbid me to use that kind of language. I would use it anyway and challenge him to challenge me.

Another thing I did to irritate him was call him “Usamah Bin-Levi”. This really pissed him off. He would tell me that it was funny…and laugh…but forbade me on more than one occasion from calling him that outside of our circle. I promptly told the entire platoon. Even the platoon sergeant was amused.

Yet, one of the most benign things that I did as an attempt to bug him actually took root. I dubbed our team the Tantric Sex Gods (TSG). It was a joke that carried on well after he left. Levi went home early from Afghanistan. Before he left we had grown to “understand” one another. We had relied on each other during some tough missions and I respected that at least.

Levi’s departure left Chad in charge. Chad and I didn’t know each other well before I came to the team. He came to the platoon right before we deployed and just wasn’t my type of guy. However, we became great friends, and close allies against Levi. We didn’t know it, but Afghanistan was just a training ground for us. Less than a year after leaving Afghanistan, we were watching each other’s backs in Iraq.

Chad liked TSG as a team name and wrote it everywhere. It continued to stick. After Ryan went home a little bit early, it was just Chad and I. We did patrols every night. We called it playing “find the mine.” We would drive around the airfield doing “Signal Searches”. The roads were mostly cleared, but there were still an awful lot of mines hanging around out there. We weren’t very good at the game. We never once found a mine. Others did though, sometimes on routes we had just taken days or even hours before. We were good at our jobs, the best, but we were bad at finding mines.

Chad and I were tighter than ticks on a hound, but as civilians we might not have ever become friends. There were others in our platoon that were great friends too. Avery, Kelly (not my wife), Sparky, Bunchie, Easton, Lee, Denisse, and many others were there and made the time in the ‘Ghan livable. However, they don’t play a role in this story yet. Through our shared experiences, Chad and I became Tantric Sex Gods…and we would learn that there is nothing mightier…except Sabre Tooth Tigers.

This was the setting of my life before it all started. This was my life before the box. I was not alone.