To celebrate the one-year anniversary of my bone marrow transplant yesterday, the wife and I partied down with my ophthalmologist for my quarterly eye exam. Okay, an eye exam is not much of a party, but since the results were good—my eyeballs are GVHD and infection free—I’ll take the eye exam over a party-hardy party any day.
While the results of the exam were good, it didn’t come without its hassles. The worst part about it, after the hour-and-a-half wait to see the doctor, that is (What is it about doctors that they think they can keep us waiting so long? Don’t they realize that—ah…don’t even get me started about doctor etiquette. We’ll save that rant for another day.), was having my pupils dilated so the doc could check for CMV and other infections and then having them numbed and stained yellow so she could perform a Glaucoma Test.
In addition to being blinded by all of the light my dilated pupils were sucking in, I had yellow fluorescent DayGlo-looking crap leaking out of my eyes all day long. I looked like some squinty, jaundiced-eyed mutant. In fact, couple my yellow fluorescent eyes with my big ol’ pumpkin head and I looked like I could have starred in one of Maurice Sendak’s books.
Speaking of DayGlo, I’m reminded of a time back in my navy days when I was deployed on some ship, I forget which one, and we were manning the rails getting ready to pull into some port, I forget where. Everyone was wearing their summer white uniforms for the occasion.
While everyone was wearing their summer white uniforms, not everyone was manning the rails. Many sailors were still responsible for making sure the ship functioned properly, to include the boatswain’s mates and other “deck apes,” as sailors responsible for the care and maintenance of the ship and other real navy stuff that I don’t really have a clue about are affectionately called.
While most of the crew stood around bored, doing nothing except standing and anxiously waiting to get to the pier so the liberty call fun could begin, the deck apes were preparing mooring lines and anchor chains and doing other dirty and greasy tasks that basically destroyed their lily-white uniforms. Too bad for them.
We have a saying in the navy: “Choose your rate, choose your fate.” They’re the ones who wanted to be a boatswain’s mate, ergo, they’re the ones who get the nasty jobs and uniforms that go with it.
It was an early morning port of call and, as there wasn’t much light to see by, some genius came up with the bright (pun intended) idea to have all the deck apes and other stuckies responsible for getting the ship tied safely to pier carry fluorescent yellow glow sticks in their shirt pockets so they could be seen more easily during the working party evolutions.
I think you can see where this is going.
By the time the ship finally got tied up and all those crazy deck apes got finished heaving and ho-ing and to-ing and fro-ing, most of the glow sticks that were being carried around in their pockets had broken and had leaked everywhere. By everywhere, I’m not just talking about all over the deck apes’ grease-and-dirt-covered summer white uniforms, I’m talking everywhere like all over the deck, all over the superstructure, all over the ropes that extended out to the pier, all over just about everything.
When that ship pulled alongside the pier, she glowed like a fluorescent yellow floating lantern. Too bad we all didn’t have some of the yellow glaucoma testing goop to put in our eyes. Just imagine how that would have looked to all the locals to see a fluorescent glowing warship pull in with the entire crew standing around with mad glowing eyes.
Fluorescent glowing warships and sailors with mad glowing eyes. How about that for a new national defense strategy?