Wednesday, May 4, 2016

'Schoolhouse Shenanigans'

Have no idea if I can run out the statute of limitations on the things we did back in our heyday in the ol’ Canoe Club… including lying to the Workcenter Supervisors, LPOs & Chiefs as well as the brass end of the COC!  Not that I will ever face a convening Courts Martial of my piers or the ol’ coots who used to beat me until my morale improved kind’a thing!! 'FTN’ or ‘Fuck the Navy' was our motto in those first four years… who would’ve ever thought we’d make a career out of the damned outfit?!?

Story goes…

As God's gift of tact and polite interaction with a diverse group of Aussies & Coasties… as many times it be the case, I had a customary tradition of drawing iniquitous doodles on chalkboards, whiteboards, scrap paper, nautical charts and a deck log or two, or three or four… who’s counting?!?

You might recall a previous yarn about a doodle I’d created in CIC underway concerning a couple of shipmates and some farm animals! Or a few doodles I left in the ASROC Rover Log Book a time or two, that almost got me sent to Mast!! Yeah, I was a trifling young man at that age… couldn’t help but laugh and make funny jokes out of each situation that arose!!!

Well, you wouldn’t believe what I pulled out of the ol’ trusty Seabag just the other day!  A picture of me doodling away on a whiteboard in full uniform with shipmates laughing up a storm…

CIWS ‘C’ school was where I’d been assigned on this particular little caper on Dry Side FTC San Diego!  Each classroom in the Gun building had a rather prominent whiteboard at the front of the class! Not unusual as any classroom might have… yet white boards were kind of the new thing at a time when they were replacing all the black chalkboards that we previously grew up on!! From the third floor we had a scenic view of downtown San Dog and it was always a beautiful day for a young lad like me to get caught up daydreaming out the window instead of doing what was expected!!!

In anticipation of learning about that electronic whizbang ‘R2D2’ with a great big hard-on, I had quite a few comical situations that happened in that school house!! There was the typical ‘tap dance on each other’s Coroframs’ as a matter of words… and who could ever forget the ‘shit my pants’ moment… when I literally, well… shit my pants!! Then there were the times we sat in class shooting the proverbial shit and that’s when the ‘Expo’ Dry Erase markers became the source of an artistic curiosity that poor Whiteboard will never forget!!!

In anticipation of graduation and orders back out to the fleet, we spent many hours lollygagging without any real adult supervision! That’s when I took out the magic marker and illustrated a depiction of several classmates on hands and knees enjoying the golden shower offered by the Navy Counselor handing out Sea Billets in order to those with superior marks in the class!! Looking back I realized the great deal of trouble we all went through to keep the COC from turning us on our ears!! I think FC1 Andreski popped in on us and got so mad the veins stood out his neck!!!

"You miserable good-for-nothing sons-a-bitches… this ain’t art class!"

But Andreski was a class act!  He allowed his anger to get the best of him for only  a moment, then immediately recognized the humor of it all…

Alright, who’s the Picasso that put this orgy of ecstacy on the whiteboard?”

To which one of our Aussie mates replied…

“I will give you the facts as I know them, the Tooth Fairy did it!”

… The rest of us just stood and grinned a lot looking stupid as usual…

“Alright… well it better go away before Chief see’s it and all hell breaks loose!”

… After all, we were all sailors as a matter of fact!!!

As I recall, a lively conversation ensued, regarding the ideas of professionalism and appropriate behavior… Then all the good little boys finished their milk and cookies and went promptly back to being Sailors again! And I can’t help how the whole class had expressed their entire admiration of my masterpiece which was quickly wiped away to be lost and wasted away in the back of our memories!! But wait… years later I find a picture of that one moment in time… a tidbit of the past… those damned pranks and shenanigans we were so often involved in!! Boy wasn’t the ol’ Canoe Club Great back then?!? 


1 comment:

  1. Bwahahaha ah the ol' whiteboard. Doubtless numerous other guys did similar back in the day....
    I recall one time, back when I was fresh out of boot, I wanted to be a bubblehead and was going through Sub School. Our instructor was a MT2 (yep, a (Ballistic) Missile Tech); he was actually kind of a off-beat guy and would do some weird stuff on that whiteboard (though not of the graphic nature that you described, or that some of our guys did! There were a few times someone doodled some artwork of the MT2 engaged in various types of sexual activity with a Trident missile. But, if MT2 ever saw it, he didn't say anything....)

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