So what do you do for a living?

There used to be this guy in my unit who had a thing about girls (no, really.) Let's call him Joe. Inevitably, if you're chatting a girl up in a bar, one of the things that will come up is the question of what you do for a living. Joe's thing was to assume the most outlandish possible profession possible, and convince the girl that that was his calling. He would do the research and could talk a convincing line. No good reason - it was just something to do. One of his favorites was being the pilot for the Goodyear Blimp. (Two mutual friends of his once met each other in a bar in Raleigh over this. One of them overheard the other one telling a girl about flying the Goodyear blimp. He walked up and asked "Hey, do you know Joe...?" )

We were doing some training at JRTC (the Joint Readiness Training Center) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. We'd come back in from a fairly lengthy training mission and had some downtime, so we grabbed a car and headed to Alexandria, mainly to go to Tunk's Steakhouse. Somehow, though, we wound up at a bar afterwards. Joe had insinuated himself into a group of young women who were also out drinking, and was talking to one of them pretty intently. It turned out that she was unmarried and an accountant for a local firm - so far, so good - when the conversation turned to Joe's line of work. "Oh, I'm Arnold Schwartzenegger's stunt double." "Excuse me?" "I'm Arnold Schwartzenegger's stunt double. We're out here shooting a new movie out on Fort Polk." Well, at least on the face of it, it was plausible. Joe had the right build for it, but this girl was having none of it, and threw the bullshit flag. "There is no way. C'mon, what do you do really?" Joe, no doubt having had previous experience in having his cover story rejected, laughed it off like it was a joke. "Oh," he told her, "We're in the army. We're doing some training out on Fort Polk." They chat a bit more, and then she asks "So what do you do in the army?" He squared his shoulders, stuck out his chin, and told her, "Well, actually, I'm in Special Forces. Y'know, a Green Beret." She looked at him for a long moment, and then in this exasperated tone of voice, said, "I'd believe you were Arnold Schwartznegger's stunt double before I'd believe that!"

It was a long time after that before we stopped going up to him and asking "Excuse me, Mister, but are you a reeeeal Green Beret?"