Propeller Butt-Cheeks

Curtis Hammill joins me for this week's episode to talk about his time in the US Marine Corps. He is also the brother of Jeff Holt was the initial inspiration for this podcast. 

Ghost Turd Stories donates fifty percent of its profits from the sale of our merchandise line and our content subscriptions to carefully selected families of veterans and first responders who have taken their own life. The other fifty percent is used to grow the company to bring greater awareness of the struggle many veterans and first responders have relating to mental health challenges and suicide ideation.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Gent

Troy Gent is the Host of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast. He served a total of eight years as an infantryman in the US Marine Corps.

Editor

Rebecca Gent

Rebecca is the editor and publisher of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast.

What is The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast?

The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast was born out of a place of grief. Having lost my best friend from the Marine Corps in the early hours of 2023, I realized that this feeling was all too familiar. I wanted to do something, not only for the loss I felt, but for the loss I knew many families were enduring day to day.

We believe that a major way to relieve the stressors of life is to talk, laugh, cry, and share our experiences without fear of offense. We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as anyone who is interested in knowing more about what it’s like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

INTRODUCTION: Hello everyone and welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.
I'm your host, Troy Gent.

Ghost Turd Stories mission is using humorous stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.

Ghost Turd Stories vision Is to use humor from veteran and first responder stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.

We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as those interested in knowing more about what it's like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

TROY GENT: Welcome everybody.

This is Troy.

Today my guest is Curtis and he is the brother of, Jeff Holt, my real good friend, I'd say best friend from the Marine Corps, who in the early hours of New Year's day this year committed suicide and he's the whole reason that I've decided to start this podcast and start the company that's going to be a result of this podcast.

Thank you so much Curtis for coming and welcome.
How are you?

CURTIS HAMMILL: I'm doing great, Troy.

Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

TROY GENT: Would you mind telling us what unit you were with and, if you feel comfortable, what timeframe?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Sure.

I was with third tracks.

So I was with Bravo company down in thirty-three area Delmar in 1999 to 2004…

1998 to 2004?

Something like that.

In that neighborhood.

I was like camp Pendleton guy.

TROY GENT: How did that work?

Did you just re-enlist for two years?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Stop loss actually hit me.

I was actually home on advanced party back from Japan for like two weeks so we could start prepping to get tracks back and stuff.

Then 9/11 happened.

So since we're in the middle of it, we were just like, "Oh, okay."

And they were like, "Standby and get ready cause you're going back to Japan."

I got an extended tour.

I almost got my fifth year in because of stop loss.

TROY GENT: Okay and then what did you decide to do afterward?

CURTIS HAMMELL: Afterward, I did a little bit of everything.

I tried going back to school.

I don't think I was as serious about it as I wanted to so I jumped around in junior colleges for a little bit.

Then I wound up in Texas where I took a job doing clinical research and then I started to take things more seriously.

I met my wife doing clinical research for Marines in 29 Palms.

They were doing hearing research and they brought me on as sort of an RA, a helper to record data.

I'd just make sure that guys were doing the right thing.

So I could talk to them about signing informed consents and trying to help Marines prevent hearing loss is actually how it all got started.

Then I moved out to Texas and I did clinical research for like six years before I got my degree in English.

Then we jumped around, did a couple more random things, and then I ended up here in Virginia.

I have my teaching credentials in order so I can teach high school English now.

It's a far cry from being an Amtraker in the Marine Corps but it's still a fantastic time.

TROY GENT: Awesome.
My dad was an English and Spanish teacher for fourty years.

CURTIS HAMILL: No way!

Where at?

TROY GENT: He finished in Beaver, Utah.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Oh, yeah.

TROY GENT: Yeah, he taught in Washington and Oregon states.

Do you ever tell your high school students any of your stories?

CURTIS HAMMILL: I do tell them some things.

Usually, I'll tell them…

I think I remember pretty early MCT, which is like you've just finished the little bit of the depot and then they…

You were actually a grunt so you had a different thing, right?

You didn't do MCT.

TROY GENT: I did SOI.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Right.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So, right.

Mine was like a revamped three-week version of SOI.

it's the imitation where...

TROY GENT: Every Marine is a rifleman, right?

CURTIS HAMMILL: That's right.

Yeah, everyone's a rifleman.

Everyone's rifleman first.

So you'd go to the pretend infantry school and you'd go do the things and the instructors are great.

Everyone was great.

I was little.

I'm six-four, two-twenty-five now.

But coming out of boot camp, I was six-four, like a buck fifty-five.

TROY GENT: Oh yeah.

You were kind of a beanpole.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah and they fill your head with the, "There's only two kinds of Marines.

You're either a Rottweiler or you're a Doberman.

You're big and mean or you're skinny and you're mean."

I was definitely skinny.

I don't know that I was mean but I remembered MCT just trying to outthink problems.

We'd go on these like ten-mile hikes or whatever and I'd be trying to pull my arm, through my blouse and tie it off on the ammo can that was filled with cement to try to…

I was like, "Look, my body can carry the weight but like my fingers cannot so this is like the way smarter way to handle this in my mind."

TROY GENT: I've never heard of anybody doing that.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Now it came back around and they were just like, "You can't do that."

But that was in the form of like, "You push with the rifle off the ground instead of doing the thing and then pick up the ammo can with your fingers and alternate it every fifty yards or however far you could carry it."

TROY GENT: Yeah, when you're in the Marine Corps for like the first year or so they really don't want you to think so much as much as they want you just to do what they tell you to do.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Instant willing obedience to orders, dog.

Instant willing obedience to orders.

TROY GENT: So the idea of you doing things like tying your blouse to the ammocans is like, "Whoa, this is like way above where you're supposed to be thinking."

CURTIS HAMMILL: And at the time, I probably thought that I was real smart because I did okay in the ASVAB.

I'll tell you this.

I had just got to boot camp.

Jeff, he was already in for like a year and so they let you write letters.

So on Sunday, you’d do what any good Marine does.

You find which is the longest service and you go and you write your letters and then they will mail them for you, right?

Is that what you did?

TROY GENT: Well, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so I'm a Mormon but the Mormons always had the longest service.

CURTIS HAMMILL: They did have the longest service.

TROY GENT: Is that who you went to?

CURTIS HAMMILL: That is who I went to and that again was on the recommendation, from Jeff.
He was like, "The service is an extra thirty minutes.

He was like, "Everyone's nice."

I grew up in a small town: Spring Creek, Nevada.

There was a real heavy influence from the church and just fantastic people far and wide.

I loved all the experiences from my Mormon friends.

But the fact that I could have an extra thirty minutes of time where I was not going to get yelled at, I really appreciated that.

And so I would write people letters.

And Jeff, he wrote me every week no matter what.

No matter where he was, I got a letter from him every single week.

Yeah, he really wanted me to stay motivated and to stay hungry since we had done so much growing up together.

And one day he wrote me this letter.

He's like, "Hey man, who are your drill instructors?

It's a shot in the dark but I know a lot of people now.

I've been in for a year and some change.

I might know those guys so you should tell me who they are.

And I was like, "Oh yeah!

It's staff sergeant and so and so and staff sergeant and so and so and sergeant and so and so."

I was like, "Oh man, this is going to be so awesome if I get friends of the program in here."

About two weeks later, he wrote the drill instructors individually.

And he was like, "Hey, Staff Sergeant so and so.

Hey, Sergeant so and so.

This is my brother.

I'm with three-seven."

And he was just like, "Smoke my brother."

And like...

Yeah and so I spent the next week and a half just living on the quarter-deck just getting smoked just for the fun of it.

And they just...

They could not stop laughing about it.

They thought it was great.

They were just like, "We've seen a lot but like this guy…

This guy really wants you to be strong."

TROY GENT: I grew up with all sisters and I had the fortune of being in the Marine Corps infantry for eight total years and it was the only time that I was around all men.

It was like I had countless numbers of brothers for eight years and it was an incredible experience.
And that's just what we do with each other.

We just mess with each other.

We can laugh about anything together and it's just incredible.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah, it's shared misery.

I try and tell people it's shared misery.

Shared misery is everything.

It will carry you through most adversity if you let it.

You got to share in it because you're all going to be up at the same time doing the same thing, going on the same runs.

Those kinds of things bring you closer together, closer than your average folks.

TROY GENT: For sure.

CURTIS HAMMILL: We would go to CAXs and I was fortunate enough to have a cell phone and be able to get ahold of my brother.

So we would link up whenever we could for CAXs and we would play a joke on his guys or my guys.

I would line up some of my younger guys all in formation around him and some of his guys.

He was always ranked above me.

I think at the time he might have been Corporal Holt or Sergeant Holt when I was just Corporal Hamill.

I would get my guys into formation and I would sort of explain.

I'd be like, "Hey, this is my brother but we have different parents."

Jeff was a big guy.

He was six-five, two-thirty on a bad day.

Yeah.

He was just a humongous human.

He'd go to Zeke's and be holding fifty-cal rifles with one in each arm and he'd send me videos of him shooting them.

So he was an enormous human.

But I would line up my guys in formation and then I'd break it down the small school circle.

And I'd be like, "If you guys really want a good story about this guy, go ask him about his brother.

His brother was an Olympic pushup champion and I can't remember exactly how many pushups he did but go ask Sergeant Holt about that whenever you get a chance."

TROY GENT: Were you making this part up like when you would tell them this?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah so I would be telling my guys.

I'd be like, "Hey, we're going to be working with these guys but if you want to hear like a cool story..."

And so I'd have like a couple of guys do pushups so it gets in their brain, I'm planting the seed, and then they'd be like, "Oh man.

I could only do fifty, seventy-five, whatever."

I'd be like, "Yeah but you can't even touch the Olympic level that his brother can do."

Eventually, somebody would always go ask him.

They'd be like, "Hey, man.

Hey, Sergeant.

I heard your brother can do a lot of push-ups?"

My brother would just look him dead in the face and be like, "My brother doesn't have any arms.

Who told you that?

I'm going to murder you."

And like you would just see the face of fear like you've never seen fear.

My screensaver for him is a picture of a guy with no arms because I just could not get over the fact that we used to do this back and forth all the time and sometimes he would do it for his guys.

Oh, I found it.

If you can still see my camera, there's a guy with no arms on there.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah, so we'd been running that joke my entire adult life.

TROY GENT: That's hilarious.

Now he made threats to them but did he follow up with anything?

Push-ups or anything?

CURTIS HAMMILL: It was all just scare tactics.

And then I would be like, "You didn't really ask him about it!"

I'd be like, "Go back to the tracks!"

One time I actually forgot to tell a guy it was a joke and he stressed about it because at CAX you split up with whoever you're with.

And so we took off with one unit and my brother with another and he was just like, "Oh my God.

When we get back, I think your brother might kill me."

And he worried about it for like two days.

Because we had split up, I didn't have a chance to tell him it was just a joke.

So that one lasted for way too long.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

Yeah, what other crazy stuff did you do?

CURTIS HAMMILL: How do I try and be as PC about this as possible?

I spent almost two years in Japan.

TROY GENT: What base were you on?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Tip off the Spear at Camp Schwab, if you remember Camp Schwab.

The first time we went there you do what everybody does.

You buy a TV, you buy a VCR back when VHS tapes were still available, and then I'd have people from the States send me like…

I was like, "Hey, just send me...

Tape whatever you can."

And so people would send me like Dawson's Creek, like the full series on VHS.
And I'd be like, "This is perfect.

This is just the kind of drama I was looking for."

And so you'd watch everything on your TV and then it'd be time to go home and you'd have the option to ship your TV home but then you'd look at it and it costs almost as much as you paid for the TV.

So what we do is we'd have a couple of cocktails, as you might do.

Now at Camp Schwab, it was a little bit different because unless you're an officer or a staff NCO, you can't buy liquor.

You can buy beer but you can't buy liquor.

So there was a staff sergeant that would buy liquor and we would trade him.

We would trade him for beer.

He liked beer more than he did liquor but he had a limit of the beer he could buy.

So we would buy whatever the equivalent was and we would just trade him straight across so that we could have something for the barracks.

We'd get a couple of cocktails deep and a couple of days before we were scheduled to go back home, we would have the TV Olympics.

And what we would do at the barracks is we would go up to the top floor, which I think for us was the fourth floor, and depending on what TV you bought, we would throw them off the roof.

Sometimes for distance.

Sometimes for spin.

I remember we made up a bunch of categories for all the things.

It made it a real worthwhile adventure to see your hundred-and-fifty-dollar TV fly across a field.

We'd just shattered TVs until we got caught.

TROY GENT: We had this guy, and you only do stuff like this if you're drunk, I guess every once in a while you find someone that's dumb enough to do something like this when they're not drinking, but he got this poncho liner and he put two corners in each hand and he decided…

CURTIS HAMMILL: Oh no.

Oh no.

TROY GENT: Yeah and this is at Camp Schwab.

So he decides that he wants to go skydiving out of the third story and he jumps and of course the poncho liner doesn't work and I think he actually broke his back.

But, oh my gosh.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I still like a good poncho liner to this day.

I will still use one as an all-purpose blanket downstairs but I can tell you without a doubt they are not parachute friendly.

You end up doing a lot of dumb things because when you don't have time to exercise your brain, you fill it with alcohol and then the bad ideas come.

We were doing the planning for what would become the invasion for the Baghdad airport in Yuma, Arizona.

There was a base out there.

We went and did some things out there and I remember I got fapped out to be a Humvee driver for an officer.

And I was like, "Cool, this will be fine."

And I went with a buddy of mine.

He was my A driver.

They picked us both to go and so I was like, "Oh, you know what?

Even though we're not supposed to drink, I'm going to bring something."

So I went to the liquor store and got a big plastic jug of Old Crow.

It was like the worst possible thing.

I was like, "I'm not going to spend money in this because I don't know how long it's going to be in the sun or whatever.

So I remember we rolled it in our sleeping bags and took it with us and probably like the first night we were out there, it had gotten so hot it cracked and leaked all over my sleeping bag system.

When we stopped, I told my buddy, I was like, "Oh my God.

We're about to get NJP'd."

TROY GENT: You hadn't drank at all.
CURTIS HAMMILL: It had just leaked all over.

But like the back of my Humvee…

I got the sir back there and I'm like, "Oh, alright, sir.

Well, we got your spot."

So I have to like jerry-rig tie my sleeping bag underneath the thing and find a way to throw away the broken thing of Old Crow.

TROY GENT: When were you planning on drinking that?

Part of our deal was every day we had to set up the CP for all these bigwigs.

So after we were done setting up, they'd give us some free time.

We were not necessary personnel.

We were Amtrakers who happened to be Humvee licensed.

TROY GENT: Were you given libo or were you in the field still and just doing whatever you wanted?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah, we were still in the field and we were just like, "Oh, we'll just bring two things and we'll see what happens."

TROY GENT: Was it authorized or was it like you were sneaking it?

CURTIS HAMMILL: We were sneaking it.

For sure we were sneaking it.

Then I had to sleep just with my poncho liner.

That's why it's probably my best friend still is because I couldn't use my sleeping system.

We decided to do a company smoker.

Did you guys ever throw any smokers?

TROY GENT: I've never heard that term.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Like boxing matches.

Again, when you're bored at the barracks, this is what you're gonna do.

So we set up boxing matches.

So we got two sets of boxing gloves.

We had four or six pairs of boxing gloves for some reason.

My buddy goes, "I just want to spar a little bit."

So we go back to his room and I'm like, "Alright."

I think I'm tough stuff.

So I'm throwing a little here, throwing a little there, and touched him up with a jab.

He came around with like a left cross and he turned my lights out.

And I remember waking up, trying to tune him up for his fight, and he got tired beating me up in his room.

TROY GENT: We would do a bull in the ring a lot.
They would just say, "Hey, there's no punching in the face," but everything else pretty much was a go.

CURTIS HAMMILL: One of the most scared times ever in my life was going to your barracks in 29 Palms and just watching the kid from Montana who was a state wrestling champion.

TROY GENT: Chris?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah, Coats and just watching him…

Like that dude went through like ten people that day and was just looking for more.

Like he beat up Jeff.

He beat up probably everyone I saw that night.

TROY GENT: He beat all of us up, dude.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I could not.

I'd never seen a dude just run through that many people.

TROY GENT: Chris, he went to combat later to Iraq with the National Guard unit but September 11th happened a month before I got out the first time.

So Chris never saw combat and he just liked to fight anyway but he was releasing some aggression by just, "I'll fight everybody, every day.

I don't care.

I just want to fight.”

CURTIS HAMMILL: There are some MMA guys that don't have as many fights as that guy had.

I feel like that guy was scrapping daily.

Every time I see him, I try to pick a fight with him and he won't fight with me anymore.

He's going to listen to this.

I actually already interviewed him.

He's got, I think, four or five daughters and he's got one son.

His son walks up behind him, I think he's eight now, and just punches him in the back of the head.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Does it feel like payback?

Feel like payback?

TROY GENT: Yeah, I think that's what it is.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I bet he could still sling it.

I bet.
TROY GENT: Oh, he could.

He could if he wanted to.

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CURTIS HAMMILL: You're a big human too.

What are you walking around at?

Like you're a pretty big dude.

TROY GENT: I’m about two-forty right now.

So I'm pretty heavy into the weights.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I’ll try and use my jujitsu.

So next time I see you, we'll get the mats out and we'll do it safely.

TROY GENT: Oh, you'll smoke me, dude.

CURTIS HAMMILL: That's the only way I ever beat my brother in my entire life.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Two Christmases ago.

TROY GENT: On the kitchen floor, right?

CURTIS HAMMILL: The only time I've ever beat him in my entire life.

It's funny to see when brothers get together and still act like they're ten years old.

He came to visit me in San Diego and he was staying at my house in the gas lamp.

I went to a special boutique store at one of the malls and I got a thing called "Da Bomb Hot Sauce".

It used to be the hottest thing you could find.

Now they've got stuff way hotter.

But I brought this stuff home and I was like, "Hey man, I'm making some bacon and eggs."

And I was like, "I got the sauce but it's almost like a joke because it's so hot."

And he was like, "Well, don't be shy.

I can take it."

I put like a couple drops in this thing.

And he's like, "Nah, a little more."

So I gave him like a little squirt.

And he takes a bite of this egg and cheese burrito, then he's just living with ice in his mouth and he's got tears in his eyes.

Like he can't stand it.

He's just like, "Oh my God.

You have to try it."

And I was like, "I will not try it.

I bought this stuff to not try it."

And he was like, "Well, you will try it or I will make you try it."

And I was just like, "Oh, listen.

I got to drive back to base right now."

And he was like, "You're going to try it."

He held me down, unscrewed the top and just rubbed it in my lips and in my gums and in my mouth and I was just like, "Oh my God."

And so now I am living underneath the sink.

Those things are oil-based so you have to use like Dawn dishwashing stuff to get it off.

We laughed about it and we were going out that night so I put the Da Bomb Hot Sauce in my cargo pants and took it with us to the bar.

My brother went to the bathroom and I got it out and I put a bunch inside of his beer and I put it around the inside rim of his beer bottle.

And when he got back, I did the thing where you just like click the top and I was like, "Cheers, brother.
I love you."

I hit the top of his beer so it would start to foam so he had to just shoot it back.

And he gave me a look mid-beer that was just like, "Okay, I earned this one."

He was still almost throwing up at the bar but it was not as bad as it was when we were at the house earlier.

The real joke was on me later because I just wiped it off with some napkins.

We laughed about it and we kept going on about our day but eventually, you got to use the restroom and like I said it's oil-based.

It stays on you.

And I went pee later and I came back from the head and was just like, "God, is it hot in here or is it just my nether regions?"

And I had forgot to wash my hands pre-bathroom and so I ended up getting myself.

I've got a notebook here where I'm just like checking them off as I can half remember them.

I'm trying to remember every stupid twenty-dollar tattoo I got.

TROY GENT: Yeah, what's the stupidest tattoo you saw someone get?

CURTIS HAMMILL: Well, we were told not to get one when we went to Thailand and we found a guy who was like, "I'll do whatever you want for twenty dollars.

And so I was like, "That's a done deal."

I was like, "Put the Grim Reaper right on my back."

I was still like a hundred and seventy-pound guy.

Very little.

So there I was with the Grim Reaper on my back for twenty dollars.

I think he did a good job at the time but that thing has stretched out since then and so now he's like the Grim Paw Reaper.

So he's a lot bigger.

He's a lot older.

Now I'm looking for coverup, which is going to cost me way more than twenty dollars.

Did you get any tattoos?

Are you a tattoo guy or did you manage to get out with none?

TROY GENT: I managed to get out with zero.

I bought black Sabbath tickets in Vegas to take my sister to the concert.

My sister is thirteen years older than me.

And this was in…

Oh gosh, it must've been 1999 or something.

She was like, "I want to go to a tattoo parlor and I want to tattoo eventually.

I want to see if maybe I'll find what I want."

At that time I was thinking, "Maybe I should get a tattoo.

What would I want?"

This and that.

I went in there and the dude that was doing tattoos was bald and his whole head was tattooed and his face was tattooed.

And I looked at him like, "I'm never getting a tattoo ever."

So that was the only time that I considered it for a brief amount of time.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I think the irony is the guy who gave me a tattoo had no tattoos.

TROY GENT: He was just doing it because military deployments were there all the time and he's like, "I can do a business.

I can start a business here."

CURTIS HAMILL: I guess.

He was a good artist.

Oh man...

If you want a tattoo story, I got one.

I just thought of this just now.

Oh man.

One of these guys would kill me.

I'll tell him that we're going to talk about it.

We had an artist in our unit.

And like I said, we got stuck on the rock in Japan for almost two years.

One of the guys who was really good at art was like, "I'm going to order a tattoo gun off this…”

It wasn't a website back then.

You had to mail it in or whatever.

And he was like, "I'm going to order the kit and it's going to come.

I'm going to need practice canvases.

Free tattoos are on their way."

And so sure enough, weeks go by and he gets his kit.

He would sketch them out and then practice on his own thighs and his legs and he starts giving away free tattoos.

We had one guy that got USMC on his chest and it was it was okay.

It wasn't great.

And then we had a guy and he says, "I want propellers on my butt cheeks because when it's time for me to get intimate, I want to be able to go, "Bbbbbbwwwwww," to let them know that the motor's working.

If you've never had a tattoo, one of the things you have to do is you have to make sure that the area you're about to tattoo is clean.

We had all gathered in this room and I remember never laughing so hard in my life because we had to shave this guy's ass because he couldn't do it on his own and we were about to put propellers on there.

I will say though, after it was done, I would say that propellers were some of his best work up to that point.

He'd done some other stuff that was okay but those propellers were actually pretty legit and they looked just like boat propellers.

TROY GENT: Oh my gosh.

That's hilarious.

The dumbest one I heard of was a Marine that didn't want to spend the money.

He wanted it to look like he had pistols in his belt when he had his shirt off.

So he got tattoos of pistols.

Basically, it looked like they were hanging out of his belt buckle and his pants, but he didn't want to spend the money to get the whole pistol drawn.

So he only had half the pistols.

So when he took his pants off, there was only half a pistol on each side.

CURTIS HAMMILL: That's going to be a conversation starter wherever you go.

You're always going to be able to pull your shirt up just a little bit and be like, "Don't make me pull this thing out because there's only half of it.

You make so many mistakes when you're in and most of them involve alcohol.

I was an exception to that rule cause I think in eight years I drank twice while was in the Marine Corps and I did a lot of stupid stuff.

I was the guy that did the stupid stuff regularly.

CURTIS HAMMILL: But you saved thousands of dollars though.

Just so you know, you saved lots of money.

TROY GENT: I had so much fun.

I had the ability to do crazy stuff and stupid stuff without really getting in trouble for it.

CURTIS HAMMILL: That's an incredible talent to have.

TROY GENT: Yeah, I was that guy.

Like, "No, Gent's not drinking.

That's just who Gent is."

I was like that in high school and my daughters have grown to accept who their father is and actually, for the most part, enjoy it because it's funny to them.

I have a lot more tact strategically because I've matured and been more concerned with other people but I still haven't lost that sense of humor.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Most Marines I know…

We're all pretty dark humans.

When it comes to humor, we're just like, "Kill something every day, no matter how small, just to maintain proficiency."

We're very…

We're in a darker place and we're okay with that.

TROY GENT: I got this friend that is in business here locally and he owns a pest control company.
He calls himself the pest assassin.

And he's a Marine, but he's like, "I just got to carry on."

He uses his Marine mentality to kill bugs.

CURTIS HAMMILL: One spray, one kill.

I can appreciate that.

There is a Marine Corps plumbing business here and they're the only plumbers that we use.

Whenever we've messed up enough at our house to do it, it's great to support Marines again.

And again, I can't thank you enough for putting this together.

It's such a great thing.

I'm so pleased that it struck you in the way that it did and I'm just so thankful that you're on this journey, Troy.

TROY GENT: I appreciate that, Curtis.

Yeah, we're gonna do great things with this and I appreciate you taking the time.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

It's so important.

I don't think people talk about it enough.

When people are stressed out, life comes at you a bunch of different ways, and when you're a first responder or you're a veteran like it's tough to get through.

I don't think enough of us lean on each other like we should or sit down and talk enough.

We gotta be okay with talking about feelings and writing things down and trying to make things better.
We're all people and we're all living on this spinning rock and we're trying to get it all figured out and it's not easy for everyone.

I'm so thankful for everyone that does reach out and I love it when it does work.

Hopefully, you can reach enough people or someone whenever they're in need to make a difference, brother.

TROY GENT: I heard a guy, a quote just two nights ago, he said that the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety.

The opposite of addiction is connection.

CURTIS HAMMILL: Oh, that's so good.

TROY GENT: Yeah, connection to other human beings and I really just hope that this can connect people that have had similar experiences so that we can hopefully save some lives.

You know?

CURTIS HAMMILL: In order to really live your life, you have to connect with people and I hope people decide to connect.

TROY GENT: Well, thanks so much, Curtis.

Have a great night and a great week.

CURTIS HAMMILL: I will.

You do the same, Troy.

Thank you so much.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening.

Please tell your friends and family so that we can bring more joy and awareness to those struggling with suicide ideation and the families who desperately need help after the loss of someone they love to suicide.