About the Mouse on Seawolf

The newest member of our boat's A-gang was a young seaman about a third the weight and half the height of other A-gangers. Never have I met a better-adjusted submariner. As his personal trademark, he carried his 14" cresent wrench in his back pocket almost everywhere he went. After about 6 months "the Mouse", as he was now called, even grew a moustache you could actually see. That's about the time he started qualifying aft.

Almost everytime Mouse went past frame 45, the nuke MMs "greased" him (not his mustache) or perpetrated some other wicked, satanic act they had learned in nukey school for pest extermination. It made for great mess chatter and scared the heck out of others who still had to qualify. Spirits were high and Mouse was gutsy.

One day, the nuke MMs felt the need to escalate. They passed the word that the next time they caught Mouse back aft, they were going to "shave off" his 6-month stash. At this point, the A-gang chief went to bat for Mouse, and soon the XO said they'd better not shave off Mouse's stash. In fact, this prohibition was posted in writing on the crew's mess bulletin board and in manuevering. So what did the MMs do?

Mouse shaved off the other half of his mustache himself, of course. There was no Captain's mustache mast. Afterwards, Mouse was able to travel aft without further harassment and qualify with relative ease. His next mustache came in much quicker, too, since by now he had probably picked up a healthy dose of "fast neutrons".

posted by Vigilis @ 12:03 AM