In the military services, it might still be a part of recruit basic training to train for chemical attack. In boot camp in the 1970s, I was marched into a gas chamber with sixty other personnel, all wearing our gas masks, and exposed to tear gas. Learning then that my mask had a poor seal, I very quickly ended up with tears and snot streaming inside the mask, hacking and choking when they had us pull it off for “full effect”! And I realized I would have been a casualty. And my poor carcass? filmed for a “here lies stupid” lesson.
That training has never left me. Even on a Thursday evening just before bedtime when my spouse in a fit of cleaning mania, liberally doses the bathroom off our bedroom in chlorine bleach. She happily scrubbed the mold and grime away. I wanted to be a good husband, and though I wanted to go to bed desperately, I offered to help. But the lesson I learned was to stand out of the way. I thought she wanted toothbrush to scrub the sink. In the best tradition of Chief’s wife (I’ve been long retired) she was scrubbing with a toothbrush to get the difficult grit!
No, she wanted a new toothbrush. For herself. At that moment I felt lower than whale excrement. And that’s something I haven’t thought about since it was applied to us in the first days of boot camp forty years ago. It’s okay she says. I can go to bed now. Except that the chlorine gas that she grudgingly opened a window to release – when I mentioned it – is already making me sneeze two rooms away. But it is okay. I probably would have died in boot camp anyway. My dumb#$# should have taken one for the team.
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 