‘Screwing up a Good Thing’

While blowing on the embers of an old memory it had come to me how I’ve been a night person pretty much my whole life! I currently do a night shift at work, I worked the night shift on my last tour before I retired, and I even did nights while in ‘C’ School way back when… and it was such a blast!!!

I believe it was the summer of 90’ I left the USS Bagley for CIWS ‘C’ school in sunny San Diego! This was a great time filled with fond memories!! The school was six months long if memory serves.... and as a night student it couldn’t get any better!!!

The hours were really rough I tell you, as we went to class at 1600 hours and got out at roughly 2000 hours most every night! Occasionally we stayed later but only when we had practical tests and labs!! Beyond that it was a dream job and even afforded us a chance to hang out at Dirty Dan’s Pure Platinum at least once a week!!!

We'd screw off most of the time when not tracing prints or listening to instructor’s lesson plans!  We'd generally knock off early after a good clean up!!  It was a walk in the park as far as the ol’ Canoe Club was concerned, but you got to figure some idiot would fuck it up!!!

There was a day class my roommate was in and a student in his class complained that night classes got out early and didn’t see why they weren’t afforded the same! Back then it was pretty common for nights to get off early… cutting through the bullshit and just getting to the task at hand!! It was a mutual handshake between the instructors and the students… we take down notes, clean the shitters and sweep & swab, then everyone gets to go home early… including the instructors!!!

Then one day our class counselor came in and dropped a stinky deuce in the middle of class…

“The day class ahead of you bitched about nights getting out early and screwed the pooch for everyone! Now you all have to stay until at least 2300 hours every night!”

Nowadays in the new 'PC' Navy they call this special breed of Crackerjack a ‘Blue Falcon,’ but back then we just called them ‘Buddy Fuckers!’ Never the less it was quite a shit show!! It went up the Chain and the shit hit the fan … of course the Skipper of FTC and everyone in between had no idea we were knocking off early every night!!!

Now what kind of diabolical son-of-a-bitch would do such a thing?!? To this day that secret has been well hidden from me and my shipmates!! We never figured out who that repulsive troll may have been… may he rot in hell!!!

Aaahh, the memories! They just keep flooding back!! Sunny days in San Dog and dreams of Go-Go dancers & their beautiful butts… you just couldn’t beat it!!!