That when you’ve come back from your morning run, and are taking a shower in the facilities provided, the water pressure from the shower head decreases when someone using the same facilities set for other reasons, em: Flushes.
I know, I shouldn’t be disconcerted: Fresh water, all the way ’round. There’s only so much of it. More required over here means less to be had over there. But still.
It doesn’t seem right.
When I was a midshipman, we went one summer to Quantico, Virginia, where Marine officers are tenderly brought to full flower in a process roughly analgous to the face-hugger/chest buster phenomenon made so popular in the “Alien” movie trilogy.
In the student barracks, not only did the cold water cut out entirely whenever someone in the western hemisphere “sent the army home,” the hot water, as though waiting for just such an opportunity, jetted out with vicious abandon. Strangely enough, in the instant just before the boiling water leapt out to wreak its savageries upon your exposed flesh, it was preceded by a tiny slug of cold water. In time, we mids came to understand what this was: All a part of the Marine Officer training program. A combat reactions course, if you will. The price of unbroiled skin was eternal vigilance.
And quick reflexes.
There’s no real point to all this. Just small stuff.
Hedonistic frat man that I was (was? but I digress), the house reached an agreement that the “flusher” had to shout out “Shower!” loudly so that the showerees had a chance to save themselves from parboiling.
The lesson carried over to my NROTC experience in the huts of Little Creek…
But woe be unto he who failed to issue the warning…
My mother used this to excellent effect in the house I grew up in. My brother was notorious for taking long, very long showers. My mother tried everything to get him to shorten them, with no luck. So she’d set herself a timer – I think 10 minutes – and if he wasn’t done by then, she’d turn on the hot water full blast in the kitchen. We’d hear this massive yell from the bathroom and voila, my brother’s shower would have ended.
He wasn’t the brightest bulb – he never learned lessons so it happened to him over and over and over, until he moved out!
Non-military story I know, but even 30 years later I have to chuckle at it. My mother took great joy in the doing.
//remembering a TV commercial involving a Peeping Tom giraffe ogleing a scantilly-clad lady in a second story window, followed by a rogue elephant reaching its trunk into an unguarded bathroom window, to flush the commode on yet another unsuspecting shower victim…
Zoo delinquents.
In your neighborhood.
Could happen.
Boy that brought back memories. I was in Quantico for 12 weeks – going through their version of ROTC. Just love quonsan huts now. And the showers must be designed that way – they were like that in every building. Grand.
You need to do a tour on a conventional Lex. Where half way through the cruise you switch to water hours and everyone is fighting to be the middle of that hour for your department/command. Because if you are there too early then the water is freezing cold and if your there too late the water starts to give you slugs of hot water as it starts to disappear. However, these slugs seem like just straight steam.
It is what makes cruise worth living for.
Overall, loads of fun
have you squids not yet mastered the technique of calling “Fire in the Hole”??
serves ya right if ya get the blast.
State university, Fall 1971, freshman basket ball team. Entire team in showers. Varsity players flush- 10 “pill” wannabees jump back avoiding 3rd degree burns!
Fast forward 2 years…B2 (different nickname then) flushes..entire “new” frosh team jumps back uttering many oaths beginning w/Mother!
Evil LOL.
B2
Boy…. and here I thought you enjoyed running out of COLD water, Lex.
It’s been a while since you’ve needed a cold shower, so I’m guessing you did something on that run to deserve the low pressure.
oh… I’ve got friends in lowwwwww places
*wink*