For some background, my father in law grew up in small town Texas in the 60s/70s, like less than 1000 people small town, and he enlisted into the Army in the 80s. So the world was a little different at that time. Anyway, on to the story.

I just got back from a year in Korea and was talking with my father in law about our, exchanging stories and such. He asks me if I ever got in trouble while I was there, I replied I didn't and he told me to "strap myself in". Oh boy.

He was in Germany back in the 80s and drove/worked on trucks, think he said 1.5 ton trucks. Well one day, one of them broke down and he spent that day fixing it up. Next day they have a CC Call, and his platoon sergeant (I think is what he said, I'm not Army) calls in him asking what he did to get the truck back up and running. His response is as such: "Sarge, I n***rrigged that sht back together."

Said you could hear a pin drop for a few seconds after he said that, as apparently most of his group at the time was black. His commander cleared his throat and moved on. After the CC Call was done, his first shirt came up to him and told him to grab his platoon sergeant and meet him in his office.

So they go to the shirts office and he tells him that it is absolutely not ok to be saying things like that, and that the more common term to be using is "Jerryrigging". Well, my father in law being the joker that he is, said he didn't like that term, as it was offensive to him because his name was Jerry. Shirt didn't take kindly to that, and told his platoon sergeant to gtfo and make sure it doesn't happen again. He did fire watch at his barracks for about a month after the incident, and he never said that term again.