Knee Knockers, Aye

To follow a thread in AI's comments section, there is a reference from Gunner about our shipboard hatches. They are like doors, but are smaller, ovaler (more oval?), and are designed to be dogged down to stop fire and flooding. I only laid myself out across the forehead two times , and both times I was cutting the fool. So I have no real complaints in that department.

But knee knocking? Yikes, that hurts like the dickens. Because it isn't your knee it's your shin, and that shin knocking HURTS!! Yeah, yeah, yeah... i see the purpose in 'em. Watertight integrity and all that.

But the worst was my time on the Aegis cruisers. All the piping and valves and whatnot runs in the overhead. It ain't covered up by a false cieling or anything like that. I cleared the lowest stuff by about 1/2 inch. Which means I would go weeks traipsing up and down the passageways with no problem. But every few months I would be passing under a low hanger and be on the ball of my foot part of my step, and Wham!, right in the noggin. Laid out on my back, eyes glazed over. A big culprit in not seeing it coming was the fact that we wore ball caps with a bill jutting out over our eyes.

So anyway, AI & Gunner, yep, I've knocked knees and banged noggins my fill over the years.

But, by way of a little truth in advertising, check this out. Navy Recruitment Ad

Nothing reminds you more that it is Christmas in Florida than the transplanted old yankee woman, wearing a Santa hat with a cig in her lips, barrelling into the Wal-Mart parking lot at a high rate of speed.

There was a young woman standing at the exit of said Wal-Mart with a baby in her arms. She was holding a sign that I couldn't read, except the part at the bottom that I could tell said GOD BLESS. She was thin and pale, which was stark because she appeared to be at least half black. I wasn't positive about that, and it never turns out good when a Southern man tries to explain what makes him think someone has black in the family tree so I won't, but she looked quite beat down by life. The kind of beat down and skinny you see in drug abusers. I gave her some money. I had just gotten paid and also recieved my Christmas bonus, so I was flush. It wasn't an amazing amount, but would buy a good meal. I folded it up and called her over. I handed it to her. We didn't lock eyes. We didn't speak. It was not dramatic and it was not real warm and fuzzy. Made me wonder again if she might have a drug problem, but I pulled away without wondering too long. Maybe she does. Or maybe she doesn't. Maybe she just has demons to confront. But what I did know was this: the baby was real. And I at least wanted to be sure that not having any money was not the reason he would go hungry tonight.

To quote Homer Simpson, "Being unselfish is a natural high, like hiking or paint thinner."

This is our hotel in Bangkok. Millennium Hilton

You know you know this story. But it never gets old:

Our late night discussions also involved careers in corn snake breeding and genetics, out

Ramblin' Ed