Good ‘ol Mongo, what a guy. Of course “Mongo” wasn’t his real name, but for the purposes of this story, I will only tell the nickname that we gave him.

When I was on my second ship in the Navy, we played pranks on each other constantly. It was easy to get bored, and just as easy to get into trouble.

One guy in our crew was a big burly dude from down south somewhere. This guy didn’t have tree trunks for legs, he had tree trunks for ARMS, and barrels for legs. He could easily bench press 500lbs and ate about that much a day too. To give a better idea of his brute strength, it took 8 of us to subdue him for his birthday beat down. We pined him to the floor, zip tied his hands and legs together, and he says… “are you guys ready?”. We look at each other like “HUH?”. All of a sudden he snaps the zip ties, does a push up with all of us still holding him and starts tossing us like kids. Good ‘ol Mongo.

Another time, we were taking pictures on the bow of the ship (the front). As we were all in the weapons division, each of us grabbed a gun for the shoot. (pun intended). Some had handguns, some had M-14′s, others had shotguns… except Mongo. What does he grab? the MOUNTED 50 caliber machine gun that weighs over 110lbs. I still have the picture today, with him pointing it as if it were a 13lb rifle.

Did I mention that Mongo wasn’t the brightest of chaps? One of the most kind and gentle people, but a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if ya know what I mean. On our bunks we had mini lockers for holding a wallet, change, keys and other little stuff. There were five push buttons that worked as a combination lock, and kept everything secure. Well, Mongo’s combo was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… and we figured it out pretty easily.

Inside of Mongo’s little locker wasn’t money or anything valuable, but his huge bottle of vitamins. We thought it would be funny to super glue the lid on for him, but we never foresaw what was about to happen next!

Mongo comes down to his bunk about midnight or so, after his late guard duty, and all lights were off. The rest of us are quietly watching him, well, listening to him, in our own bunks. He opens his mini locker, just as he does every night… and then we hear him. He was grunting under the strain of trying to open his bottle of vitamins. OMG you had to be there, it was so funny! But WAIT, there’s more…

A few minutes pass as Mongo tries to get this lid off, with no success. Now he is getting REALLY pissed, and we are all trying not to be heard as we laugh hysterically. Then we hear this loud “AAAAARRRRRRRR” and the loudest pop ever. With all of his brute strength, he rips the entire lid clean off. I’m not talking about just the cap, O NO, I’m talking about the plastic neck that is just before the threads. He tears this top off with so much force that his hand still holding the bottle flings out wildly, sending his 1,000 vitamins flying across the room. Our aisle was in the middle of three more aisles, all with rows of bunks in them. These little pills went over all of them, and into the bunks on the far side of the room. (with unknowing people sleeping in them). We could hear the pills raining down onto the floor, the bunks, and the wall. Then there was the angry shouts of the people that were pelted by these pills in their sleep. When they came around to our bunks, and saw who it was, of course THEY apologized to Mongo for shouting… LOL

None of us expected the super glue to hold that tight. We figured that it would just slow him down, and his strength would be able to break the seal. Making him lose his entire bottle of vitamins was not the intention and we felt bad. We each gave him part of our own stash of vitamins, and he forgave us… Good ‘Ol Mongo. Miss ya buddy!

-bryan