(*A.Woods)

Ensign Casey’s Diary

My Experience as A Reservist Serving a Week’s Time aboard Seaview

Day one/

Well, here I am ‘somewhere underwater’, (classified) but those warm thermal socks come in handy for those cold nights when I have the duty.

The Captain is pretty good at letting me make a fool of myself. So far I’ve been on the carpet for misinterpreting ‘Take her Down’ with ‘Take her, darn!’, and spent an hour trying to convince Congresswoman Smith who’s along on an inspection tour, to accompany me to a more private part of the boat for a bit of canoodleing. Hey I was just following orders.

Day Two/

When I finally got out of the brig, the XO had a talk with me about the Skipper’s Rhode Island accent. Hey, it’s not my fault Crane’s got problems with his ‘R’s. How am I supposed to know any better, and I told Morton so. I was politely, if firmly told, to shape up or ship out; there was a torpedo tube with my name on it. So I decided to put in some extra cleaning duty. Does wonders for sucking up and is a real morale booster when an officer, even a lowly Ensign like me, does hard labor.

Well, according to the cleaning chart, the lab hadn’t seen a mop for some time. There was purple goop all over the place, even the walls, and I had to use a breathing apparatus to keep from passing out from the fumes, but I finally got everything spic and span. Well, I was hungry after all that hard work, and it’s not like the leafy salads in the small fridge in the adjoining study had any names on them, so I took a few minutes and finished them off.

You can imagine my surprise when instead of a ‘well done’, over my cleaning, the Admiral got really mad and said I’d ruined everything and stomped out! How was I to know that goop was a genetically engineered life form and wanted to be undisturbed in order to propagate? Cheech, nobody tells me anything!

Day Three/

When I asked Cookie for some more salads like the ones I had in the lab, you could have heard a pin drop, then he said he hadn’t the makings for any salad for the trip, and started to laugh. They all did, then started checking me over for any signs of sprouting leaves, of all things. The Skipper joked that I ate some alien plant forms and might be up on charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer and intergalactic cooperation. Good sense of humor for a Captain. And I thought they were all stuffed shirts.

Day Four/

It was no joke. I’ve just spent the last few hours pulling weeds out of my hair and these damn tendrils are wreaking havoc. It’s very hard to concentrate on watch when you just gotta scratch your uh, well, you know. Doc says my possession by the plant formers will pass, literally, then they’ll simply germinate all over again, complete with ready made fertilizer.

Day Five/

Finally rid of the aliens, but I couldn’t quite quell the urge to free the asparagus from the galley. ‘Go, my brothers, go,’ I urged last night as I stuffed all of them into the torpedo tube (it didn’t have my name on it after all) and fired them into the sea. How was I to know that made the klaxon ring and sent the command officer’s scampering to fail safe controls? It was hours before they finally got word from ComSubPac that’ some knucklehead aboard Seaview accidentally got rid of some galley garbage and Nelson was going to be fined for unauthorized waste control. Garbage! They called my brothers garbage! Oh the pain, the pain!

Day Six/

For awhile I thought my Submarine School Training was lacking. For the life of me I didn’t know anything about the balls we were supposed to be answering...what kind were they, voice interactive? Battery activated? Where were they kept, in the supply room, rec room, where? I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone and me a whiz at basketball. The sub’s certainly large enough to have a court tucked away some place.

Finally I found Morton having dinner in Wardroom and asked him. How was I to know he’d meant ‘prepare to answer bells’? Talk about a Freudian slip! At least he's all sailor! But still, him giving me grief about the Captain’s ‘R’s!

Day Seven/

The Captain’s locked in his cabin and there are guards outside. Part of a drill they say. Sharkey’s issued everyone whistles, and a Frisbee each, ‘just in case’, he said.

In case of what, nobody will tell me. But I do know that the Skipper was acting a little weird this morning. He kept looking in the Galley cupboards for some breakfast cereal I’ve never heard of but what Cookie called Captain’s Kibble.

Day Eight/

We’re docking soon. The Captain’s not locked up anymore and I heard him in a heated argument with Nelson about which is bigger, a werewolf or something he called a man beast. I think they have got to get some shore leave!

As for me, I can hardly wait to take a long hot shower, but I’m going to add some flea dip to my shampoo. Good thing Sickbay has a large supply. Weird how fleas are a real problem on this boat. Maybe should inform the health dept.

Can hardly wait to serve my remaining week on staff at NIMR where things are normal