When The Smoke Clears

I finally received my Cruise Book tonight. I've been looking forward to getting it for a long time. It's kind of like a high school year book for deployments, I guess. Each department has a section, in which the divisions are shown with individual pictures of all of the sailors. I'm not in any of them. ANY OF THEM!!!! Eight freakin' months....nothing! It's like I fell into the cracks of the pages between turning over a division and taking over as assistant department head. There are two, count them two, pictures with me in them in the whole damn book:

Picture Number One - group picture of all of the officers on the ship.

Picture Number Two - there was a night in Jebel Ali, UAE, when everything went wrong on the ship. The engineers were on the pier with IVs because of dehydration. I was completely drunk, but I ended up walking around taking water to all of them, trying to help out. I turned myself into Molly Pitcher. Literally. But the picture of me from that night - do you think it's of me giving water to passed out sailors? NO!!! I look like I just puked from being so drunk and my friend Jim pulled me up and told me to smile for the picture. He has two beers in his hands. I have a new roll of TP in mine.

So that is my legacy. That is how I will be remembered 30 years from now when someone pulls out their USS NASHVILLE cruise book from 2004. I guess it could be worse. My friend Chuck, who was the dentist until he left the ship mid-cruise, is not shown with Dental Department. He's shown in Aviation Department, and his name is ABH2 Allen Brown according to the caption. He's really LT Charles Truncale. Who do you think has it worst? Probably Chuck. True, I have no identity, but he has someone else's.