A Sub Vet's Story
To my fellow Veterans: thank you for your service. On this Veteran's Day, I'd like to share this story (crossposted at Unconsidered Trifles) about a Sub Vet--a Lieutenant and an English major to boot!--as he had to face Admiral Rickover to enter "his" nuke sub program back in its early days:“I thought I was a pretty hot pistol, a lieutenant, been on a submarine,” he says. “He was there, looked up at me, said ‘Who the hell are you?’ I gave him my name. ‘What do you want?’ I told him, ‘I want to go on your nuclear sub.’ He had my papers on his desk. ‘What did you do at Harvard?’ I said I majored in English lit and history. ‘You what? You know what you are?’ I said no sir. ‘You are an intellectual bum. Get the hell out of here.’ So I said, ‘OK. I don’t need any of this,’ and I started to leave.”Let's hear it for us "intellectual bums" here in the Humanities! hoo-RAY! ... LOL
posted by WillyShake @ 6:18 AM
2 Comments:
Its really interesting how we remember The Admiral's interview with such detail. Even with all the PCO's pre-interview coaching on how not to respond to questions with generalities; he got me with, "Where did you graduate in your high school class?". I responded firmly with, "About half". He then said, "Half of what, two?" I attempted to recover spouting out a specific number which I was not at all sure of. His final question was, "When did you finally grow up". I said, "After I had been in the Navy a couple of years". He said, "Get out of here!".
I was quickly escorted by the attending PCO to a broom closet down the hall and left there for about 2 hours. Lots of time to agonize over my lack and the omen I had experienced on the way into the building that morning where a bird had crapped down the front of my blues.
Lets here it for us who "never grew up" in spite of it all. hoo-RAY! (Sure got to learn how to put on a good act though.)
ha-HA! Great story--thanks for sharing.
Post a Comment
<< Home