‘Chicken Wire Canoe and DRB Too’

When I first put on Khakis… one of the most poignant writings in my charge book was written by a Gunnersmate Chief who said and I quote…

“Listen… in your first few months at a new command you’ll be part of the solution! After that, if you hadn’t figured out how fucked up things are… you’re part of the problem!”

Years later I’d realized that might have been the best advice I’d ever gotten! And no matter what anyone says… some people including Officers and Chiefs are gauddamned idiots!! And one thing I learned along the way is not to argue with a gauddamned idiot… because they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!!!

I think maybe it was Einstein… hell I don’t know who said it… that ‘Ignorance replicates itself at the speed of light, But enlightenment is a very slow process’… or in laments terms… ‘Some peoples mooring lines don’t quite reach the dock!!!’

Well, on my very first ship after donning the fouled anchors, I must’ve struck ‘Gold’ ‘cause I ended up on the Good Ship Momsen that would soon hit the ‘Navy Times’ with the headlines of Booze, Babes, Bullets & Drugs!!!

You’d a figured there would’ve been a few cases of the ol’ sausage and donut situation considering the fact we’d just commissioned the ‘Love Boat’ of sorts… at least a few of the gauddamned crusty bastard khakis onboard thought so anyway… while slipp’n the unauthorized crusty old pork spear through the junior panty hamster!!!

But hell what do you expect when you plant a bunch’a ol’ goats going through midlife crisis in hotel rooms next to lil’ miss ‘paddle the pink canoe’ looking to advance under extraordinary circumstances… not only that, separate them all from their husbands, wives and hometown sweethearts for eighteen months or more!! I guess the rake was in the shed but they were miss’n their hoes!! Not that I’m condoning it… just say’n we’re noth’n but mammals… doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel    

One of the first cases of silliness I’d run across was in the Atrium Hotel Brunswick, Maine!  After a night of drunkenness with a few fellow Chiefs I’d hit my rack but not long before the hotel ‘fire alarm’ had gone off!!!

Everyone rushed out the exit doors and being recognized as a senior member of the crew, I was approached by the hotel manager (with a caddy and annoying tone)…

“Excuse me Sir but this gentleman here you will find is the cause of this debacle. He clearly has injured his hand from breaking the glass to the fire alarm and plainly admits to doing so as well! I expect you will take care of this problem or we’ll have to press charges for the false fire alarm!” 

“Sure… I’ll handle it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!”

And there stood one of the ships freshly minted Firemen straight outta Damage Control ‘A’ School with a bloody hand and drunk as hell…

“Chief I was just doing what I was taught in ‘A’ school… to pull the actuator in case of a fire!”

This boy was a few cards short of a full deck…

“Son… just go straight to your room we’ll have this discussion with your Chief tomorrow!!”

The next day sure as shit I snatched his ass up and took him straight to his Chief… the DCC!!! After a few explicative words and a discussion about how screwed up the night was before his Chief calls him into his room…

“Have a seat!”

“I’d rather stand!”

It’s not a fuck’n invitation… Sit the fuck down before I knock you down! I Have a very important question… please tell me… cause I’m just sooo curious to find out… what the fuck was going on in your head?!?! Are you always this fucked up or are you try’n to amuse me!?!?

“Sorry Chief... I was just try’n to set off the sprinkler sytem!!!”

“YOU DUMB FUCK!” Why the hell would you do that?!?”

“Well the fire alarm was already sounding and I thought if I pulled the actuator it would set off the sprinklers!!!”

“You shit head… I swear your daddy jacked off in a flower pot and  a bloom’n idiot was born!!!”

Come to find out the lil’ fellar wasn’t lying… some other dumbass idiot later confessed to pulling the prank and this kid was just try’n to do the right thing!!! Doesn’t that make you feel like a real dumbass!!!

But I gotta tell you… sitt’n at the Disciplinary Review Boards, (DRB) it just got dumber and dumber along the way!!!

The DRB serves a couple of purposes… one usually is to define the discrepancy of a young shipmate and come up with ways to unfuck them… Especially if they’re eighteen year old idiots about as squared away as hammered dogshit!!!  The other is to recommend to the Skipper what kind of punishment should be given to this idiot or just give’m a ration of shit at our level if it’s not too serious an offense!!!

Usually the Board consists of three to four Chiefs and the Master-at-Arms forming them up outside the ‘Goatlocker’!! As the Chiefs involved walk into the mess…

“What is this… a social goat fuck? Form the fuck up!”

“Holy Shit I'm glad this isn’t a timed evolution you’re moving slower than old people fuck!!”

I remember a young Personelman coming to DRB after telling the Chief why he got the shit beat out of ‘em at the local ferry!! Senior Chief Smalley, head of the board, was all in his shit…

“What were you doing hanging out at the Ferry?”

“I was looking for meth…”

“What the FUCK… Are you Cranio-rectally inverted?!? Are you that stupid to come in here and tell us…???”

“I was just try’n to find a way to get kicked out of the Navy?”

I didn't know whether to shit or go blind, so I closed one eye and farted… I just couldn’t believe what was coming outta this kid’s mouth!!!

“Son… didn’t you ever hear that life’s a bitch? ‘Cause if it was a slut… it would be easy!!!”

Needless to say he was gone in less than a week!

Then there was the fool who tried to play ‘Shoot ‘em up Cowboy’ at the local barracks one night over a female shipmate… Apparently at the ship’s Christmas Party he decided to chase her down and catch her in the act with another shipmate in her barracks room!! When he got there he blew a hole through the door of her room with a 9MM!!!

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Senior Ch… Ch… Chief, I j,j,j… just got d,d,d… drunk and lost my mind…”

“Your fuck’n right about that… and watching you stutter is like watching a monkey eat a banana and fuck a football at the same time!! You should be a gauddamned poster child for a prophylactic because your about as useless as a set of tits on a nun!!!”

Then of course was the First Class weasel who’d turned himself in for having Porn Addiction… This was right before the ITs were about to do a security sweep on the ship’s NPRNet look’n for malware and porn surfed up on the ol’ internet…

This fella was probably the most worthless piece of skin God ever wrapped around an asshole! We didn’t even get to take him to DRB because he had to go out on a Psych Evaluation… and as a fellow Firecontrolman I recommended to his Chief he should write in his eval…

“Strives for mediocrity seldom achieving adequate results!!”

The guy was about ‘Three Hundred Pounds’ of Bullshit stuffed in a ‘Hundred and Fifty’ Pound Bag!!!

“FC1… You should really get some smiley face stickers and start practicing how to say Welcome to Walmart… because your ass doesn’t belong in this man’s Navy… You’ve got about as much integrity as a Chicken Wire Canoe!!!"

I don’t have a problem with somebody who looks at porn… but the squirrelly ass pussy could’ve at least had the decency to stick around and take his lumps!!!

But my favorite one of all time had to be Fireman Rich… He beat up a couple of ‘preppy college boys’ for being a bunch’a smartasses at a party!!!

“Rich… What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Well Chief, if a person wants to whine and act like a Bitch… he’s eventually gonna get slapped around like one!!!”

Of course we told him to firmly grab his shoulders and pull his head from his ass ‘cause that’s what we were supposed to do… but he got off pretty light considering those arrogant assholes probably got what was coming to ‘em!!!

Yes… we saw all kinds in front of us at DRB… some inane, and some downright ridiculous! My advice to any young ‘Crackerjack’ going to the Board… a little story, and it goes like this…

One cold day, a little bird… don’t know what kind, it doesn’t fucking matter… fell out of its nest and got cold. While the bird cried about the cold, a cow walked by. The cow felt sorry for the bird, so it turned around and… ‘PLOP’… dropped a steaming pile of shit on the bird. After a while the bird started getting hot and started crying again. Then a fox walked by and heard the little bird. He plucked the bird out of the cow shit, brushed it off and popped it into his mouth and ate it… And you see the moral of this story is this…

‘WHEN YOU'RE UP TO YOUR NOSE IN SHIT, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!’

But then again you know what they say about making shinola from shit… Their ain’t no way you can polish a turd… no way no how!!!