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Passing the Time

© Andrew Willis

Sailors at sea have a lot of time on their hands. Sometimes we have more time than others, but the old adage that everyone has the same amount of time in a day, namely, twenty-four hours, is even more true at sea. Believe me, I know, because there have been occasions where I've been awake for all of them. Hell, I once was awake for thirty-eight hours straight, and working for most of them.

The hardest part of all these waking hours isn't the work. It's finding things to do when you have to be awake, and you don't have much to do. Nowadays, nearly everyone has a CD player, MP3 player, DVD player, a PS1, PS2, GameCube, GameBoy, or, sometimes, even in our growing culture of dehumanizing escapist technology, a book (still my favorite pastime, by the way).

But there are times, still, when we can't play with our toys. And then what do you do?

Oh, no! We have to talk to one another! I don't mean the short, shallow and seemingly endless small talk that people convince themselves is real discussion and interaction. That may pass a few minutes, but it's not going to fill in the otherwise endless black time that is a midwatch at sea, when the moon is new, the sky is overcast and ominous, and there is nothing to do for the next thirty minutes until the next fix except stare at the dark nothing.

So we talk. About the most mundane things: home, girls (or boys, or both, depending on one's preferences), college plans or lack of same. But the really memorable conversations go on for hours, because they are about the strangest things imaginable.

First, let me tell you that every stereotype you've ever heard about sailors is true. We drink hard (most of us), work hard (most of us), and play hard (all of us). And most of us also have the wildest imaginations on the planet. As you can imagine, sometimes the conversation gets a bit off the wall. We tell stories, all of them either huge exaggerations or even bigger straight-up lies. We make stuff up, just like everyone else, only when we do it, of course, there is no way it'll ever be checked, so we figure, "Hey, might as well make it a whopper."

Except mine, of course. I'd never exaggerate the things I've done.

Even the stories aren't the best part. It's those conversations that are based on a single question, usually either adventurous or sexual in nature, always entirely hypothetical (and if you believe that one...). Most of these, or the conversations that they engender, aren't printable in a public forum like this one, but they remain stuck in the memories of the participants forever.

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