How to Simulate being in the USN

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oldcrowcv63

Tech Sergeant
1,986
180
Jan 12, 2012
Northeast North Carolina
Just got this email from my 1954 era USA Sp4 Brother. I think number 38 is the best. I remember it well. NUmber 39 is still too painful.



HOW TO SIMULATE BEING IN THE NAVY

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.

(1a. Submarines - Black outside Pea Green inside)

2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.

3. Repaint your entire house every month.

4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.

5. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

6. Once a week, blow air up your chimney, with a leaf blower and let the wind carry the soot onto your neighbor's house. Ignore his complaints.

7. Once a month, take all major appliances apart and reassemble them.

8. Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.

9. Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.

10. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water, so no bathing will be allowed.

11. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.

12. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack."

13. Make your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house- dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc. Re-qualify every 6 months.

14. Have your neighbor come over each day at 0500 , blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille,all hands heave out and trice up."

15.. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your back yard at 0600 while she reads it to you.

16. Submit a request chit to your father-in-law requesting permission to leave your house before 1500....... In triplicate.

17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not. "Now sweepers,sweepers, man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all **** cans and butt kits!"

18. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering the rest.

19. Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one-- the same one every night.

20. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting "Now general quarters, general quarters! All hands man your battle stations!"

21. Make your family's menu a week ahead of time without consulting the pantry or refrigerator.

22. Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that theyare having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.

23. Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly.
Spread icing real thick to level it off.

24. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.. (mid rats)

25. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks.
Run out into the backyard, uncoil the garden hose and put out a simulated fire.

26. Every week or so, throw your cat or dog into the pool and shout.... "Man overboard, port side!"
Rate your family members on how fast they respond.

27. Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string. Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup, "Stove manned and ready." After an hour or so, speak into the cup again "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoe box.

28. Make your family turn out all the lights and go to bed at 10 p.m. "Now taps, taps! Lights out! Maintain silence throughout the ship!" Then immediately have an 18-wheeler crash into your house.
(For aircraft carrier sailors.)

29. Build a fire in a trash can in your garage. Loudly announce to your family, "This is a drill, this is a drill! Fire in hangar bay one!"

30. Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand in front of the podium for 4-hour intervals. (Best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.)

31. Next time there's a bad thunderstorm in your area, find the biggest horse you can, put a two-inch mattress on his back, strap yourself to it and turn him loose in a barn for six hours. Then get up and go to work.

32. For former engineers: bring your lawn mower into the living room, and run it all day long.

33. Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and let the pot simmer for 5 hours before drinking.

34. Have someone under the age of ten give you a haircut with sheep shears.

35. Sew the back pockets of your jeans onto the front.

36. Add 1/3 cup of diesel fuel to the laundry.

37. Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.

38. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town. Find the most run down, trashiest bar and drink beer until you are hammered. Then walk all the way home.

39. Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you'll take them to Disney World for liberty. At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip
to Disney World has been canceled because they need to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house.

The Navy was like another planet with its own languages, customs, and rules. If you accepted and trained, then someday what seemed like insanity became genius and you wondered why anyone would live their life any differently.
 
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That is good stuff. :lol:

Here is one that I love as well. Having been there, I found it hilarious.

How to simulate an Army Deployment to Iraq while at home.

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.
 
Dang. Talk about resurrecting suppressed memories! The sub one (black on the outside, pea-green on the inside) was close....all those exposed pipes need to be painted white, then you turn on the lube-oil-humidifier while the paint is still wet, so that everything turns a bile-yellow color. Every six hours, spend 30 minutes futilely scrubbing the pipes with plain water and a paper towel in a vain attempt to make them white again.
 
I was on an aircraft carrier.

One ofem would be to simulate blindness and walk thru the hangar bay at night, carry a towel to wipe the blood from your legs from the chain tie downs used on the aircraft.

Then if you happen to have galley duty, fill a garbage can with liquid and attempt to climb a ladder with this can to your roof, climb to the pitch and dump the liquid over the other side of the roof.

Another would be to sleep under a bridge, on canvas stretched on a trampolene frame. This would simulate sleeping under the catapult.

Take the same tramp frame into a closed shipping container, in the middle of the desert and turn on the smallest fan you can find. This will simulate bunking on the fifth deck below the hangar bay.

Them were the days!
 
Heh. I had a rack on the sub one time, by removing a particle-board panel (one of those nifty ones with holes in it for hanging pegs...so, not very thick), I could reach out and smack the torpedo tube with my elbow. Made a handy place to stash stuff (lots of pipes and things, and cold seawater usually, which kept your smuggled case of Coke nice and cold), but was noisy as all getout when they test-fired a water-slug. I got to the point where I could sleep through that, and pretty much anything. Drop a tool, fire up the diesel, shoot a torpedo, never phased me. Whisper my name, or an alarm clock go off, and I was up. Heh. I'm still like that. Slept through a bunch of highway construction a while back, but woke up in an instant when a branch on a neighbor's tree snapped under the weight of snow this past winter.
 
I continued the continuous noise thing by doing the trucking thing, (as my thing), for the better part of the last 30 years. I have the same reactions.
Say my name and I am instantly awake.
And I still like my coffee like I like my women,...
Hot and bitter!
 
Way too much information Paul........

I once woke the next watch up, the wrong guy, he punched me in the chest at the same time he gave me his name.
Flew like Iron Man backwards......... I double checked from there on out!
 
I think the worst thing about going on deployment was the shift to/from 18-hour days. Typical watches were 6 hours long, in port or at sea. At sea, though, we had three watch sections, so you went 6 hours on watch, 6 hours doing maintenance/quals/training/etc, and 6 hours (hopefully) in the rack. Sometimes maintenance would run long, so you might look forward to 4 hours down. Or you'd get insomnia, and yer eyes would fail open after two hours. Then, when we pulled back in to port, we'd have to readjust back to 24-hour days. Really screws with your system, especially if you have a captain who volunteers to go out on every little op that came up....a week out, three days back in port, two weeks out, four days in, etc.
 

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