One of the biggest insults I ever gave

was when I was an Ordinary Seaman on a tug at the beginning of my career.

One of my duties was to cook the evening meal.

The captain was a cheapskate that thought that if he returned part of the grub allowance they were going to give him a medal or something. Of course he really didn't have much of a chest to pin it on. He personally did the shopping and returned with basically garbage. 

Now I am a pretty fair cook but skill can only take a person only so far. The crew knew I was doing the best I could with what I had and respected it. They were angry at the skipper.

A few days into the trip I managed to get ashore for a short time and I headed straight to a fruit stand and bought a big bag of limes. Every meal I would cut one up and put a slice on everyone's plate.

The first time I did that the chief engineer smirked and at the lime and ate it. The skipper was out of earshot at the time and the mate laughed outright and ate the proffered fruit, as did my relief.

The assistant engineer looked at it and gave me a curious look which turned into a smirk and he ate the piece of lime.

The skipper came down after the mate relieved him, looked at the lime and tossed it out and quietly ate the meal. It was obvious that the purpose of the lime went over his head.

I continued this for a couple of days and I later found out that what I had been doing at meals had gone through the fleet like a dose of salts. Everyone that heard about it howled. Finally I guess one of the other skippers japed him about it and he stormed down and demanded to know what the lime business was all about.

"The Royal Navy issues limes to prevent scurvy," I replied. "With you being so damned cheap with the grub I figured we all needed it!"

He turned purple and when he started in on me the rest of the crew turned on him.It got rather ugly and the skipper threatened to fire me. I stood my ground and pointed out that almost every single person assigned to him had requested reassignment and if he didn't smarten up I was going to join them. The entire crew backed me up. 

"So what?" he snapped.

"Did it ever occur to you that it's a lot easier to replace one skipper than it is to replace entire crews? It won't be long before the office figures that out. Besides, I am the only one that has stayed with you for two tours. They're going to sure ask a lot of questions when you fire the only person that has lasted longer than a single tour with you!"

His jaw fell and the next time we were in port he handed the chief engineer the credit card and sent him shopping. We ate pretty good after that.

It wasn't long after that I got into another program got off the tug and got promoted but that's another story.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY