Early In the Morning

I woke up an hour early this morning to get my uniform and boots ready for inspection (I’m all about the morning of, not the night before) and was so distracted by my new camera that I was close to late to quarters. I’ve always thought that I would never post a photo of my face on the blog. It seemed a necessary security measure because I really don’t want anyone from my command to stumble on my thoughts: it could put me in a tight spot. But the truth is that if someone from work manages to navigate to the blog, and if they think they might know me, well… then they know me. There are too many facts tucked away in these paragraphs. It’s too late to hide. So, photos of my face it is.

Today was my annual trip to the gas chamber and I was ready to fly in the face of Navy teaching and wear my contacts. They tell us in boot camp that the CS gas will fuse our contacts to our eyeballs and I just don’t buy it. After riots I never hear of protesters with irreparably damaged eyeballs and I’m pretty sure I would if that’s what was really going down. The evening news people would be all over it. I posted my speculation on the Myth Busters web site and learned that OSHA, the very group who is most concerned with my safety, say it’s not a problem. If you can’t trust OSHA on matters of personal safety in the work place, who can you trust?

After a slow march to the chamber (we walk there so that we’ll be forced to walk back so that we can air out our uniforms) I took the contact out of my left eye and discretely disposed of it in the grass. It seemed the safest thing to do… just in case. We lined up: two side-by-side lines of twelve, I was the first person on the left.

“Is anyone wearing contacts?”

Silence

“Is anyone pregnant or think they might be pregnant?”

Silence

“All right. Everyone don your masks.”


And I got scared. I mean really, really scared. Like I was about to face my executioner. I quickly pulled the remaining contact out of my right eye and flicked it onto the ground before I donned my mask.

When it was all over, when I was walking out of the chamber and flapping my arms to release the gas from my uniform, I was disappointed in myself. Myth isn’t supposed to trump reason, at least not in my brain. I place a very high value logic and science, or at least I thought I did, but this is clearly proof to the contrary. Is this just the beginning? And if so where does it end? Am I going to wake up one morning and think we should teach Intelligent Design in the public schools?

I'm scared.