“Charms. Charms used to be an old candy that was in MREs, Meals-Ready-to-Eat. It was probably the 90’s to 2000’s that these fuckers were in the MRE’s. All of the food in MRE’s was bland, but these were fruity and delicious. But if you ate them, it would rain. So when I first learned about it, all the DI’s in bootcamp made us give them away, because they told us it would rain if we ate them. At SOI, school of infantry, the same thing happened. All the instructors said ‘please, please don’t eat the charms.’ And one time while I was there, it legitimately started to rain. Sgt Morgan was his name, Sgt Morgan goes “Who ate ’em?! Who the fuck ate the charms?!” and one of the other junior marines pulls ’em out, a half eaten thing of charms, and so eventually so they took ’em away and they stopped putting them in the MREs, but now my junior marines who show up to the fleet still know about ’em. They stopped putting them in before these kids were even in. Damn those square little delicious things.”

The informant was smiling and laughing while telling the story. I hadn’t heard much about this before, but I guess it was before my time, apparently. Honestly, I think a lot of Marines get bored. These superstitions and legends give them something to talk about. Something to identify with as part of the culture. It keeps life interesting, because when you’re out there on patrol for a ridiculous amount of hours, or training for months on end, you need something to think about other than the danger or pain you’re in.