Master Sergeant (MSgt) "Ponderosa" and Sergeant (Sgt) "Mesquite" have been attending the same formal retraining course. For the past five weeks Having been in the Air Force for quite a while, Ponderosa is by no means happy to be retraining into a new career field. He liked his old career field just fine; he knew the technical data and was deeply familiar with its processes and procedures. Sgt Mesquite, on the other hand, is excited about retraining. She never did like her old career field, and she is now eager to learn new things and gain skills that may be useful in the civilian sector.

Ponderosa can’t stand Mesquite. He can’t help but notice that the instructors teaching the retraining course tend to gravitate toward her during breaks, and they joke around with her during class.

"The reasons are obvious," Ponderosa frequently mumbles to himself, "she is very attractive and nicely fills out her uniforms. Besides, she has a "bubbly" personality and the instructors can’t help flirting with her. Makes me want to puke."

On one particular Friday afternoon, the class is reviewing the previous week’s work in preparation for an ‘end-of-block’ test they will take the following Monday. Things have ground to a halt while Mesquite interrupts the instructor with a couple of jokes that break up the whole class. Almost immediately the class is side tracked as the instructor goes off on a tangent telling war stories and flirting with Mesquite.

As this ‘fooling around’ continued, Ponderosa gets madder and madder. He had found the week’s material quite difficult to grasp, and now she is robbing him of valuable review time. After about 15 minutes Ponderosa can’t take any more.

"Listen, Mesquite, will you just shut the _**** up so the rest of us can learn this stuff?!"