‘Needing Time Off’

You know… In enjoying my retirement from the Ol’ Canoe club, I keep being reminded of how many times I had said there was no way in hell that I would stay in the Navy any longer than my first enlistment could possibly allow… I won’t go into why I ended up making twenty plus years outta the damned thing, but I gotta tell ya, there’s a reason why ‘Civilian Life is preferred…

There was a saying I remember went like a weatherman’s forecast only it seemed a bit more accurate than your local ‘Woppler’s Doppler’ on Channel Seven…

“Well as the forecast goes, Yesterday sucked, today sucked, and tomorrow is going to suck as well with a tad bit of moisture… and that’s a pretty solid forecast for the rest of the week!!!”

Yep, life usually takes on a pretty harsh role when you’re at the bottom of the food chain as a personal servant for every gaudamned shipmate that outranks you!!!

Another one of the most demoralizing and uncomfortable things that made life shitty was all those gaudamn ‘random’ drug tests we used to have… As a young ‘Crackerjack’ I was picked for every damned urinalysis under the sun. Don’t think too many people can say they’ve taken over fifty drug tests in a two or three year period without being on parole or actually in prison… even prison life nowadays could be better than we had it haze grey & under way back then…

So naturally a little extra liberty was refreshing from time to time…  But all be gaudamned if you couldn’t get a break for anything!!! Hell, going to medical with a severe case of chest pains and a slight fever would get ya’ a

“Come back during sick-call tomorrow morning” kinda thing!!

You see, in the civilian world… these sons-a-bitches can pretty much call in sick or take time off whenever they see fit!!! Hell at my current job, if I need time off I don’t even need a reason… but in the Ol’ Canoe club if you call in because you’ve got car troubles… the whole gaudamn world is gonna come to an end!!! If you want time off… and if it’s warranted… you have to put in a gaudamned Special Request chit Seventy Two hours in advance for prior approval… if your lucky!!!

But there was this one fella… got away with the smoothest scam for the longest time… but pulled it too often and finally got caught!!!

It wasn’t one of them ‘My battery is dead and I need a jump’ gimmicks!!!

Nope… You see like I said before… we had one of them ‘random’ drug tests about twice a month onboard ship when I was on the Rainier… every morning the Master-At-Arms would post the list of lucky donators of liquid gold in the berthing compartments on each door leading to the head… hopefully to preclude many from taking that early morning piss before filling the bottle!!!

Since this list was usually posted before reveille… and since said shipmate got his forewarning before quarters even came about… he’d head to the opposite side of the Quarterdeck not being used and contact his wife to call the ship for some said emergency… ‘wife needs to be taken to the emergency room’ or ‘wife is stranded on the other side of town on the highway’ type of thing… so he would get ushered off the ship every gaudamned time his name came up on the Command Drug Urinalysis list!!!

Ol’ boy must’ve gotten away with it um’teen million times until the one day his name came up and his Leading Petty Officer just sooo happened to be the Officer Of the Deck (OOD)… so when he got that phone call to come to the Quarterdeck… the OOD told him he could gooo… as soon as he provided a sample of his liquid gold to the Master-At-Arms!!!

Ol’ boy knew he’d been made out… even fretted and told the OOD his wife better be okay or he’d be in deep shit!!! But his Con-game had already been sniffed out!!! You can only play the same card so many times before they figure you out you know…

But I gotta tell you… I don’t know how many times he played that card and got away with it… it was so under the radar that no one questioned it for the longest time…

And with that I reenlisted about three or four more times and had to put in a request chit to retire… because no matter how much I might’ve hated my gaudamned job… I had to respectfully request to get a new one… and even then my Chain-Of-Command had to approve…