Listen to children’s questions

One of the joys of teaching is listening to the questions students ask. In one of my class discussions, I mentioned getting in touch with the Captain of the submarine I served on. It triggered a lot of questions. “How big is a submarine?” “How wide is a submarine?” One that really got a lot of “yeas” was, “How do you go to the bathroom in a submarine?”

The lesson we were discussing was not about submarines so I told the class that we needed to get back to our assigned work, but that I would try to explain at another time the submarine sewage system. I do vividly recall an incident on “going to the bathroom in my submarine.” It may be worth the telling for the sailors who might be on R & R on island this holiday season, or any adult with a raunchy sense of humor. Our submarine crew even had a poem to commemorate the event. I e-mailed a friend for the words to the poem and he quickly sent a reply in seamen’s language: “You mean the one about chief dumb-ass?” This should indicate to the unwary that the telling entails toilet humor and may prove a little raw for the tender of ears. This may be the point where the queasy of stomach, and delicate of taste may stop reading!

My friend’s words are accurate. The chief mentioned was a foolish corpsman. Submarine corpsmen are expected to be the best in the Navy because they work alone and must be prepared for any medical emergency, but this guy was a little short on common sense.

Toilets on submarines drain to a big tank. When the tank is full it is pressurized at a rate greater than the outside sea pressure. The sewage will thus blow out to the ocean rather than the ocean flowing into the tank. However, if the toilet is flushed when the tank is pressurized, the sewage will spray out of the toilet. Now, about the chief corpsman. He went to the bathroom while the tank was pressurized. Told by a seaman to wait until the tank was depressurized, the corpsman replied that he wasn’t going to flush. With an air of authority and a tad touch of arrogance, the corpsman entered one of the stalls. A few minutes later a jet roar spread a killer smell. Our seaman recalled that in the middle of a dark misty cloud stood our chief corpsman with brown stuff dripping from his face and glasses.

The poor seaman who was operating the tank pressurization system tried not to laugh, but it was killing him. When other sailors realized what happened, they could not control a cacophony of laughter. For Christmas, the crew made a skit of this incident of the seaman and the corpsman to the format of “The Night Before Christmas.” It read:

“Listen, Oh Sailors, and you shall hear,
of the night we blew the sans with fear;
It was half past one and all around
the crew was asleep and there wasn’t a sound;
The lineup was checked with utmost care,
Little did we know “The Flapper” was there; (the valve in the toilet is called a flapper valve, after the incident the corpsman became known as “chief flapper.”)
All was well, the pressure was high.
I thought I saw feet from the corner of my eye;
Before I could act or turn around
out from the shitter there came a terrible sound;
The vapor was blowing and crap was flying,
for trapped in a stall, a chief was crying;
I spun on my heels and stopped the flow,
for I thought it was time to emergency blow;
The tank was vented and empty of shit,
I still wasn’t sure the cause of it;
When out of the smoke staggered a shape,
covered in crap as brown as an ape;
“Secure the blow,” he seemed to say,
but the sans were empty anyway.
Just about then he started to think,
Someone will have to clean up this stink;
He looked in my face, I started to quail,
I know he had thought of a wonderful tale;
“It’s the “A” Gang’s valve that rolled open, I think
With a guy like that blowing, it’s lucky we don’t sink”;
I opened my mouth, I wanted to fight,
for I knew I was in for a very long night.
The moral of our story for all of the crew is:
We clean our own messes, except for a few!”

(Submarine sailors can accept a person making a mistake, but the corpsman turned the crew against him when he blamed the accident on the A-gang, the auxillary crew, and then refused to help clean up the mess)

Blowing the sanitary tank on himself is the act the chief will be most remembered for, but I remember other, more foolish things he did.

Every time we pulled into port, the corpsman was required to give the crew a lecture on safe sex. He would show pictures of sick people with STDs, go over correct use of a condom, and explain the dangers of using folk remedies that did not work.

Our corpsman made sure that condoms were placed at the exit hatches for the sailors to take. Comments from returning sailors indicated that the condoms were not stopping any STDs. Here are a few comments I remember: “The girl didn’t want me to wear it.” Yea! “I was too drunk to even find my pants.” For sure. “I only took three, and no way was I going to reuse one.” Uh-huh! “I was so wasted, I didn’t even think about it.” Really.

Of course, the corpsman’s trust on the efficacy of condoms is indicated by the fact that he took antibiotics before he left the sub. He also passed them out to his buddies, which was a great way to make sure the bugs become drug resistant. The corpsman failed to mention to the sailors that they could enjoy themselves without paid sex. He didn’t mention abstinence as an option, nor remind most of the crew that being married entailed some consideration on how they treated their spouses. He didn’t mention that the feelings of guilt might be worse than what momentary pleasure was worth. In short, each of his lectures simply assumed that because we were sailors, we were going to participate in reckless, irresponsible and downright immoral activities.

For this holiday season, along with safety messages like “Don’t drink and drive,” sailors need to remember not to flush a toilet on a submarine when the tank is pressurized, and definitely not to trust one’s physical and mental health to a condom. And to all adults, to listen to the questions children ask. They may just bring more joy than the Christmas presents.

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Valrick Welch is a elementary school teacher on Saipan.