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These words are my diary screaming out loud

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Does it say "Babysitter" on my nametag?

When I joined the Navy, I had this image of people like my dad and my grandfathers and other family members who had been officers in the Navy. You know, adults. And I put emphasis on the word adult. Little did I know that I would be dealing with children who do things like this:

This kid bought him self one of those neat knives with three blades that fold into a kind of circular shape, kind of like a ninja star. OK, fine, you might say, so what? Well, this kid lives on board, and put it in his locker. OK, you say, I still dont see the problem. Its locked up. This is contraband on the ship, but thats not even the point. Kid forgets his keys to his locker yesterday and needs the lock cut. Alright, happens all the time, the duty master at arms takes him up and cuts the lock. Locking your locker is required though, and when the berthings are cleaned daily if the cleaners come across an unlocked locker they have been instructed to take everything out of it, bag it up, and put it in a designated room downstairs for safekeeping. You fill in the rest of the story.

Or how about this one. Kid is at a party and decides that the passed out drunk girl in the other room is the perfect person to have sex with. Obviously he didn't ask her permission, she was passed out...

One more for you. Kid is on leave for Christmas visiting his mother and terminally ill father, who, by the way, noone here knew was terminally ill. This kid had negative leave, but his chain of command had worked with him to get him home for Christmas, and even gave him an extra day when he was having trouble gettinr the money from the bank to get his car to come back. This kid decided that since he had no leave he probably wouldn't get to see his family again for a year or so, he should just go ahead and stay home an extra day. So he did. No calls, no nothing. Just didn't come back, and then lied about when he did.

I could go on forever. Each of these incidents has happened in the last 4 weeks. None of the above kids is older than 20, which is really not that much younger than me. But it sure does feel it. I guess because I had only dealt with officers before I had no idea. Goes back to the whole generation gap/lack of discipline thing. Half of the kids that come straight in the Navy have never been disciplined, have never been away from Mommy and Daddy, and with this kinder gentler Navy had a cake walk through boot camp.

My CO has this nametag for his SWO Sweater that has his name and rank just like normal and then under says "SURFACE WARRIOR." I think Im gonna get one that says "BABYSITTER."

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