Anyway, at my advanced age and maturity level, I think I’m entitled to a little leeway in my storytelling. Besides, it’s my column, so there.
Just ask any computer geek (myself among them), and he, she or it will tell you that computers, especially e-mail and internet access are making the world a smaller place. Not literally, of course, no matter what Stanford and UCLA think. When I was a kid (really a kid, not acting like one), and I heard that phrase, I wondered where we’d all fit once the world became too small. At any rate, communication is not just faster than it was, it is literally faster by the speed of light.
When I enlisted in 1988, e-mail, as a ubiquitous means of communication, didn’t exist. Hell, it really didn’t exist at all. To send a message back home, we were still writing letters almost daily, a journal of the day’s events, and our thoughts and feelings in ink and paper, a permanent record of one’s life away from home. We’d pack them up in bulging envelopes the night before arriving at our next port visit after weeks at sea, or if we were fortunate enough to be operating with a carrier (perhaps the only time you’ll ever hear that from a destroyer sailor) and be close enough to an American base, maybe once or twice a week. Knowing how awful the mail service was, we’d number the envelopes and then see in what order they arrived home.
When I went back to sea after my first shore tour, the navy had upgraded somewhat, and they realized that they could send emails to the civilian world through the Navy’s supply system. So we’d write up our emails, put them on a floppy disk, and drop them in the office every day by five. They’d all get sent out in order then. The office guys would also download and print out incoming emails, and then deliver them to the recipient. But this is kind of like writing a love letter to your mistress, then giving it to your wife to mail out for you. You know it’s going to be read, so you better be careful what you say.
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