'F.R.E.D.'

Here’s another ‘Goofy Memory’ that zipped right out of my analog mind and out into the open…

I know some of you shipmates went to the old school B.E.E.! This was before what’s now known as Tech Core!! We had a computer that graded our progress and his name was F.R.E.D.!! How many of you ol’ coots remember F.R.E.D.?!?

I remember when we were introduced to F.R.E.D., the central mainframe computer that would calculate your test score through each associated module! F.R.E.D. was an acronym… you remember Navy acronyms don’t you?!?  F.R.E.D. stood for “Fucking Ridiculous Electronic Device!”  Supposedly the creators of F.R.E.D. had come up with the name!!!

F.R.E.D. was nothing more than a scanning computer where you put your answer sheet full of scribbled in bubbles through it’s mouth and it would spit it out the other end and in my case… tell me what a damned idiot I was! B.E.E. was at the time, a self-paced course and the instructors were merely proctors who were there to stand over you and make sure you weren’t cheating or screwing off in the cubicles!! They weren’t much help unless you were an ass kisser or had D-cups for chesticles!!!

The Proctors were all employed by some local community college … Lake something or rather … hell, I forget the name! They all wore tan colored smocks and smoked two packs a day… and most were retired Goats from the Chief’s Mess!! I’m pretty sure if the course curriculum were on advanced female bust development they would have taken charge and schooled every one of us… I would have paid more attention and aced the course if that were the case!!!

But we were just young and dumb … Smelling like moth balls … Drinking coffee you could patch potholes with and breathing permafrost … doing nothing worth mentioning!!!