No wiggle, no toot
George the Answer Monkey has not yet sailed across the classroom, but we have been promised that his airborne antics will be witnessed soon.
Like on Wednesday after our first quiz.
My instructor is a large man on the far side of 60 with a small, gold, clip-on earring, his gray hair feathered against his temples.
He is the flinger of the monkey.
After a day in the classroom with PowerPoint slides of submarines and seaplanes, NUCs with balls in the rigging (ask me later) and RAMs with a privilege due to the nature of her work, he took us outside to show us the sky.
Earring glinting in the late afternoon sun shining down on the Florida asphalt, he pointed out mares tails and bows in cirro stratus wisps overhead.
Wind coming from the northwest, we're in for colder weather.
Its going to be in the 30s tonight.
In Florida.
Same as Maine.
What's wrong with this picture?
We all looked up and shivered, then packed our books and calculators and navigation tools into our knapsacks (I love that word- knapsacks) and went home to study the Rules of the Road.
Which are for the Water.
Which I find ironic in this moment, not just because of the name, but because Florida is one of the least likely places that anyone from the breakwater to the horizon will be following said rules that I am memorizing and sketching and poring over in a small white tome.
NUCs even with someone at the helm.
Like on Wednesday after our first quiz.
My instructor is a large man on the far side of 60 with a small, gold, clip-on earring, his gray hair feathered against his temples.
He is the flinger of the monkey.
After a day in the classroom with PowerPoint slides of submarines and seaplanes, NUCs with balls in the rigging (ask me later) and RAMs with a privilege due to the nature of her work, he took us outside to show us the sky.
Earring glinting in the late afternoon sun shining down on the Florida asphalt, he pointed out mares tails and bows in cirro stratus wisps overhead.
Wind coming from the northwest, we're in for colder weather.
Its going to be in the 30s tonight.
In Florida.
Same as Maine.
What's wrong with this picture?
We all looked up and shivered, then packed our books and calculators and navigation tools into our knapsacks (I love that word- knapsacks) and went home to study the Rules of the Road.
Which are for the Water.
Which I find ironic in this moment, not just because of the name, but because Florida is one of the least likely places that anyone from the breakwater to the horizon will be following said rules that I am memorizing and sketching and poring over in a small white tome.
NUCs even with someone at the helm.
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