My time in bootcamp - Pretty funny

[Craig]

REMEMBER, This was 1978....

Here is a story that should bring a smile to everyone...

What is the Stupidest thing I've done in the Navy?

Ok,
Everyone I tell this story to always laughs….


My bootcamp in Orlando was 8 weeks long in 1978, just like it is now. In week 7, if you were good enough, you had controlled liberty. Controlled Liberty is when you could go as a group to Sea World, or Disney World in uniform. Be on the bus at 0700 – and return on the bus by 1700. We march back to the barrack together..

The day before they allowed us to go to the Base Exchange to purchase anything needed for our trip (suntan lotion, cameras, etc). Well, I purchased one of those Polaroid self developing film camera’s. I took in back to the barracks and got it ready for the next day at Disney World.

Knowing that I needed to go directly to Basic Electricity and Electronics (BE&E) school right after bootcamp, and missing my girlfriend sooo much. I decided to take a picture of myself, naked. I found a friend at bootcamp to take the picture, which wasn’t afraid of my “manhood”. There I stood, at attention..... The picture really turned out really good.

Well, one thing in bootcamp you should never, EVER, do is write your girlfriend and your mother at the same time. Yep, you guessed it, the letter and picture of me happened to get in the letter to my mom.

Well, what happens when someone sends you pictures in the mail? You look at the pictures 1st, before you read the letter. I can just imagine the look on my mom’s face when she opened that letter…. “Boy, my son has gotten big”….

Well, the next time I called her I got the wrath of mom. Boy was she ticked. She told me, I will not give that nasty picture to your girlfriend or that letter. I tell you, it was worse that any Captains Mast. My girlfriend told me that she got my moms letter and she went over to drop it off and she said my mom seemed a little angry. She said she never received a letter from me though….

After all this time I’ve always wonder if my mom ever kept that picture. I told my sisters about it and they said “Thank god you told us, we wouldn’t know what to think if she died and we found that picture”.

All I can say is, Thank God the letters also were swapped because she could easily see what happened. If not, I bet she would have been in a daze for months.

Really stupid Sea Story huh? God, I still think of it today when I want a good laugh....