Shipboard Life Nostalgia

Thirty-one suggestions for the ex-sailor who misses the "good old days"

1. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shin a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack".

2. Don't eat any food that didn't come out of a can or need to have water added. Drink only Kool-Aid or powdered milk with your meals.

3. Paint the walls inside your house pea green, the ceilings dirty white, and the staircases gray. Number all the doors and windows and mark them "X", "Y", and "Z".

4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping.

5. Repeat back everything anyone says to you.

6. Every time there's a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "High".

8. Don't watch TV except movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.

9. Don't do your wash at home. Pick the most crowded laundromat you can find.

10. (Optional for ex-engineering types) Leave lawnmower running in your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.

11. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

12. Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.

13. Sleep with your dirty laundry.

14. Invite guests, but don't have enough food for them.

15. Once a week, at midnight, blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across and onto your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

16. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

17. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (Optional: Canned ravioli or cold soup).

18. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.

19. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run out into your yard and break out the garden hose.

20. Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put them back together.

21. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking.

22. Invite at least 85 people you don't really like to come and visit for a couple of months.

23. Store your eggs in your garage for two months and then cook a dozen each morning.

24. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

25. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills on your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

26. Put a complicated lock on your basement door and wear the key on a lanyard around your neck.

27. Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.

28. When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.

29. Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout "Man overboard, ship recovery!", run into the kitchen and sweep all thepots, pans and dishes off of the counter onto the floor, then yell at your wife for not having the place "stowed for sea".

30. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular) "Stove manned and ready". Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Say (once again to nobody in particular) "Stove secured". Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.

31. Write a controlled work package to change the oil on your car.