I've never been seasick in my life. That maybe from us having a 26 foot Chris Craft when I was a kid. We spent quite a few weekends out on the lake moored to some dead trees.
I have never seen the amount of seasick people as I did on my last command, an aircraft carrier! The vast majority of the ships crew and also the air wing, were green as hell. MOST were wogs.......never crossed the equator.
Compared to all the other ships I've been stationed on, this was a Cadillac ride in this aircraft carrier! I have never seen so many people with little patches behind their ear!
It takes quite a while to get out to open ocean from the port at Norfolk. We haven't even made it to number one buoy and I had one of my third classes Come down and sit beside my office desk complaining of being seasick. He really was seasick too....... because he was green.
Every time I would go by sick bay, there was always a line of people to get their patches!
Naturally, with it being a aircraft carrier, we had a small contingent of Marines, almost all fresh from bootcamp. None of them would go to sick call to get patches, even though it was very plainly evident that they were severely effected.
I and my first class were going to chow. I almost always ate with my guys and seldom in the Chief's mess. I really couldn't spare the time with the stupid work load. In the line ahead of us were a few of these Marines. I can tell that they were there only because they were ordered to go eat. They did look pretty rough. When they left the line to go find their seats, I said to my first class, "Let's screw wif da Grunts!" "I'm in!", said my first class.
Fate provided us seats, close to the grunts.
The grunts were just kinda picking at their food. My first class and I are intentionally a bit loud and enthusiastic in our eating. Since we were eating grinder bird, chicken, I wanted to bring up a boot camp experience that I thought would work quite well with the grunts current dilemma.
For all you non Navy or Marines, I need to explain the 'grinder bird' reference. If you were in the Navy or Marines and went to boot camp in San Diego, you had to deal with the seagulls! They were everywhere but mostly prominent on the large parade area that we called the grinder. It's basically just a huge asphalt parking lot where we did our marching . It's also where we lined up for our meals and lined up after we ate at the Chow Hall. Over time, multitude of decades, the seagulls have learned that there is food available when humans are standing on the grinder. In boot camp, you do not have that much time to eat! It's scarf it down and run. Some people just cannot tolerate scarf it down and run and when combined with all the damn inoculations, Linda Blair episodes(The Exorcist) are quite prevalent all over the grinder. Let's just say that seagulls took advantage of the additional food supply.
Oh yeah, the reason why chicken is called grinder bird........... Whenever the Chow Hall was serving chicken, someone would always say, "Damn, I thought there was less seagulls out today!" It was like that when my uncles went to boot camp in San Diego in World War Two.
Anyways......................
I began "Operation Screw Wif Da Grunts"
Both of us are tearing into our lunch........a bit
enthusiastically.
" Hey man! I know you went to boot camp in San Diego, do you remember all the damn seagulls?"
"Yeah man! They were ridiculous! Really brave and getting close to ya!"
I could tell by the reaction of three of the Marines, that they went to boot there and could relate.
" I absolutely hated the gulls then and still do now! They are absolutely disgusting beasts!"
" We had this one guy that almost always would barf after breakfast! You always knew it was coming! He would hold his stomach and say 'Oh Boy!' and you knew it was The Exorcist time!", I explained.
" And I'll bet all hell broke loose with the seagulls fighting over the puke!", My First Class chimed in,
..........More signs of distress from the Grunts
With a slight nod of my head and a couple of taps of my spoon, I signaled to my First Class that
'IT' was coming.
With a partial mouth of mashed potatoes, "Was it like this?" as I stuff two more spoon fulls of mashed taters in my mouth. I then sorta do a Belushi's Animal House Mashed Potato moment.......... not quite as enthusiastically as he did. Just over my plate.
Both of us start fighting over the mashed taters in my plate with our spoons and we both eventually got spoonfuls to our mouths.
OH FUUUUUUU was followed with OH GOOOOOOO, as two of the Grunts started to spew violently!!!
One grunt must have had really strong stomach muscles because he projected quite far!
We got up and left quite quickly and disappeared into the bowels of the ship!
I had to go up to the knee knocker area to talk to one of the airwing officers about operating the elevator doors. I passed by my Commanding Officer in the passageway, "Mornin' Skipper!"
"Good Morning Chief! Ate any Grinder Bird lately", he snickered.
I chuckled, "Not since last week, sir!"
We both went our ways
And I really had to straighten up before I went and talk this airwing idiot. He was a REAL DH and I had to tell him one of his peckerheads was screwing up MY equipment.
We pulled off the same prank a little while later as we were passing around The Horn. Since it was the air wing that gave me most of my problems, we played our next prank on a bunch of brown shoes!
It was
rough! As far as I was concerned it was still a pretty smooth ride, but there was a distinct possibility that I could have gotten sick if I'd been on the tin can that was following us. It was a brand new destroyer. It's mast with disappear in the waves.
It worked quite well too! I do think I enhanced it with the gravy aspect. We would dip our spoonfuls of slightly used mashed potatoes into a separate section of gravy before consuming.
You had to break the monotony somehow! It was either the monotony of doing nothing or the monotony of busting ass all the time. It was always the latter on that aircraft carrier!
Anyway ........................Happy Friday!!!!
. The x-ray shows I have 4 stones in my right kidney ~3-4mm, so I have that to look forward to.
