Posted on 05/18/2014 6:28:24 PM PDT by US Navy Vet
HOW TO SIMULATE BEING A SAILOR
1. Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.
2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.
3. Repaint your entire house every month using gray paint.
4. Renovate your bathroom. Lower all showerheads to four and one-half feet off the deck.
5. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.
6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn water heater temperature up to 300 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn water heater off.
7. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they used too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.
8. Put 5W-20 lube oil in your humidifier, instead of water, and set it on high.
9. Leave your lawn mower running in your living room 24 hours a day to maintain proper ambient noise level.
10. Once a month, disassemble all your major appliances and electric garden tools, inspect them and then reassemble them. Do this every week with your lawnmower, weed whacker and other gasoline powered tools.
11. Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across and onto your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
12. 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.
13. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.
14. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
15. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 4 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack."
16. Make each member your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house i.e., dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.
17. Find the dumbest guy in the neighborhood and make him your boss for the next two years.
18. Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 am, blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up."
19. 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 (6 A.M.) while she reads it to you.
20. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not.
21. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering it to you.
22. Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, and then show a different one.
23. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting that your home is under attack and ordering them to their battle stations.
24. Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are 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.
25. Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.
26. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.
27. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times 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 back yard and uncoil the garden hose.
28. 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.
29. 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 shoebox.
30. Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals. This is best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.
31. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, get a wobbly rocking chair, sit in it and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. Make sure to have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.
32. Buy a trash compactor but only use it once a week. Store up garbage in your bathtub.
33. Invite at least 375 people, most of whom you don't really like, to come and live with you for about 6 months.
34. Lock-wire the lug nuts on your car wheels.
35. Start your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere, to ensure the engine is properly "lit off".
36. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes.
37. Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and allow the pot to simmer for 5 hours before drinking.
38. Have the paperboy give you a haircut with sheep shears.
39. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's OK for you to leave your house before 1500 (3 PM).
40. Take a two-week vacation visiting the Far East, and call it "world travel".
41. Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you are going to 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.
42. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.
Now, who's ready to go back to sea?
to simulate a good liberty night, throw the money in your wallet in the trash can, and beat your head against a door frame while chewing on a dirty sock
simulates being a sound powered phone talker a GQ station.
I can relate to many of those. But I have to tell you, the Navy also has an off-white paint.
Actually, I was on heavy cruisers and some of the stuff the author presented did not exist on those “warriors”.
Lots of memories in that article.
This helps explain why navies fight each other with such ferocity. I’d be spring loaded to kill somebody or something living like that.
Yes! These bring back memories of gangway soap, 10 feet of chow line, sea bats, bulkhead remover, buckets of steam and mail bouy watches.
For those who were never in the Navy, this entire list is amazingly accurate.
Now I know why my USNA grad husband took his commission in the Marine Corps!!!
An additional one that was omitted, the cake dryer and lettuce browner in the galley, the galley could not function without them.
I was on the 245 and 382 boats and it was the same way. The torpedoes we had then were all the magnetic type (shoot deep and have the fish blow up underneath the keel) so there was little chance of them going off.
One of the WWII vets on board told me they used contact torpedoes which had a large (about 12") four-bladed propeller on the front. It had to spin x amount of times before they would arm themselves. One day he found a Newbie idly spinning the propeller to pass the time. A quick sermon on "Why you shouldn't do that" followed.
Don’t forget the 600 lb. steam powered button crusher in the ships laundry
They also have lots of pea green paint.
Sound powered phones and a GQ/refuling station watch.
I was merely a Navy wife (and mom) and found this hilarious! thanks
More funny ones:
Ways to Simulate Navy Life at Home
1.Lock all friends and family outside. Your only means of communication should be with letters that your neighbors have held for at least three weeks, discarding two of five.
2. Surround yourself with 200 people that you don’t really know or like: people who smoke, snore like Mack trucks going uphill, and use foul language like a child uses sugar on cereal.
3. Unplug all radios and TVs to completely cut yourself off from the outside world. Have a neighbor bring you a Time, Newsweek, or Proceedings from five years ago to keep you abreast of current events.
4. Monitor all home appliances hourly, recording all vital information (ie: plugged in, lights come on when doors open, etc.)
5. Do not flush the toilet for five days to simulate the smell of 40 people using the same commode.
6. Lock the bathroom twice a day for a four-hour period.
7. Wear only military uniforms. Even though nobody cares, clean and press one dress uniform and wear it for 20 minutes.
8. Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you look bald or look like you lost a fight with a demented sheep.
9. Work in 19-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time, to ensure that your body does not know or even care if it is day or night.
10. Listen to your favorite CD six times a day for two weeks, then play music that causes acute nausea until you are glad to get back to your favorite CD.
11. Cut a twin mattress in half and enclose three sides of your bed. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting up (about ten inches is a good distance) then place it on a platform that is four feet off the floor. Place a small dead animal under the bed to simulate the smell of your bunkmate’s socks.
12. Set your alarm to go off at ten-minute intervals for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various times the watchstanders and nightcrew bump around and wake you up. Place your bed on a rocking table so you are tossed around the remaining three hours. Make use of a custom clock that randomly simulates fire alarms, police sirens, helicopter crash alarms, and a new-wave rock band.
13. Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait two weeks before eating them.
14. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes.
15. Periodically, shut off all power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and then restore power.
16. At least once a month, force the commode to overflow to simulate a “black water system” boo-boo.
17. Buy a gas mask and smear it with rancid animal fat. Scrub the faceshield with steel wool until you can no longer see out of it. Wear this for two hours every fifth day especially when you are in the bathroom.
18. Study the owner’s manual for all household appliances. Routinely take an appliance apart and put it back together.
19. Remove all plants, pictures and decorations. Paint everything gray, white, or the shade of hospital smocks.
20. Buy 50 cases of toilet paper and lock up all but two rolls. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet all the time.
21. Smash your forehead or shins with a hammer every two days to simulate collision injuries sustained onboard Navy ships.
22. When making sandwiches, leave the bread out for six days, or until it is hard and stale.
23. Every ten weeks, simulate a visit to another port. Go directly to the city slums wearing your best clothes. Find the worst looking place, and ask for the most expensive beer that they carry. Drink as many as you can in four hours. Take a cab home taking the longest possible route. Tip the cabby after he charges you double because you dress funny and don’t speak right.
24. Use fresh milk for only two days after each port visit.
25. Keep the bedroom thermostat at 2 deg C and use only a thin blanket for warmth.
26. Ensure that the water heater is connected to a device that provides water at a flow rate that varies from a fast drip to a weak trickle, with the temperature alternating rapidly from -2 to 95 deg C.
27. Use only spoons which hold a minimum of 1/2 cup at a time.
28. Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not.
29. Remind yourself every day: “It’s not just a job, It’s An Adventure!
30. Mix kerosene with your water supply to simulate the de-sal plant on the ship picking up jp5 in the intake — if a lit match thrown into your coffee pot doesn’t ignite it, add more kerosene.
31. Stand outside at attention at dawn and have the poorest reader you know read the morning paper out loud. Be sure to have him skip over anything pertinent.
32. Every four hours, check the fluid level in your car’s radiator. Check the tire pressure and replace air lost from excessive pressure checks. Be sure to place red tag on ignition stating “DANGER: DO NOT OPERATE” while you perform these checks. Inform your neighbor as to the results of these checks, have him tell you to repeat the checks because he did not see you perform them.
33. Paint your house gray (exterior) include windows except for rooms you do not frequent, paint your car gray, paint your driveway a different shade of gray.
34. Clean your house until there’s absolutely not a speck of dust anywhere. Call on a stranger to come inspect your house. Ensure stranger sees dust that has collected in the time it took to find him. Stranger cannot leave until he finds irrational fault with your house/belongings.
I never served, but was a Navy wife and mom, but I think these are hilariously funny, not cynical. :D
Six feet of mess line, sound powered phone batteries, clean the fallopian tubes...
Thanks!
Boots would believe anything you told them to do LOL. We could be off VACAPES late in the afternoon headed into the sun and you could tell them we were headed to the MED because the JFK was D.I.W. Other favorite sport was making a Boot sea sick. The power of suggestion while standing with a Boot out on a sponson. LOL. Just start acting like you're gonna hurl & they caught on fast.
It could in some ways also describe trying to communicate while wearing the old OBA’s used for firefighting. The nozzleman {One on One} would have to yell to the On Scene Leader standing outside the compartment on fire what was going on. As many as three persons may have to relay what you’re saying and get it right. It’s about like trying to understand someone shouting with both hands over their mouth. Last I heard the Navy switched to Scott Air Packs. I’d say they likely have radio comm now also.
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