#the sloop

Boy, do I wish that was a joke, or a pun, or anything but what it was... which was poop. How did I discover this? Well, some poor visitor nearly stepped in it and when he got on deck, said, "Hey, I think there's some dog poop inside."

Since we don't allow dogs on board, I was very confused. Did he mean out front of the door? But no, he meant on the tiled steps inside the building. Oh, dear.

Well, I went in and had a look and I don't think that was dog poop. For one thing, there have been no dogs on the ship. So, today, I cleaned up somebody else's poop.

I also talked to a nice lady who was interested and polite and then... brought up the possibility of powder monkeys being sexually molested by older sailors. Oh, god.

Now, I know there have been predators and pedophiles in every era, but since it doesn't show up in many records, and when it does it's being seriously punished, I have no idea how prevalent it is. I also really don't want to stand around and speculate like we're watching a train wreck.

Then she dug her grave entirely when she stopped back in to pick up her son's stroller, watched a bit of the video about the slave trade. Then she went, "You know who needs to watch this video? Black people. You know, some awful things were done, but they don't recognize the contributions-" and before I could just throw up at her, some other visitors walked in and, thank God, she left.

And lastly, a sad story: The city and state flags were at half mast today, because a county police officer was shot and killed in the line of duty yesterday. As we were bringing down the colors for the day, a man and his little boy were just leaving the ship, so I asked if they wanted to help and they said yes. When we were getting the flag secured, I explained- just very briefly- why the flags were at half mast.

This is a visitor favorite:

Me: "Hi! May I stamp your tickets?"

Them: "We have tickets!"

Me: "May I *stamp* them?"

My other favorite is when I say, "Hi! How are ya'll doing today?" (Yeah, sometime in college I picked up saying ya'll. I never sounded like a Southerner before...) And the visitors don't say *anything*.

I sometimes have luck just going on with my whole spiel, but occasionally they just stare at me like I have two heads. Inevitably, as soon as I start thinking, "Oh, well, maybe they don't speak much English" they turn away from me and start talking in English to each other.

Visitors who genuinely don't speak English, incidentally, are usually much politer about it than that.

Which reminds me of the nicest interaction I had with some visitors from- going by the tones in the language they spoke- China. I was on deck knitting and they were looking around the ship. I had said hello to them when they came on and we'd pretty well established that we didn't have a language in common, so whenever they passed I would just smile and they'd smile back and at least we all knew we were friendly.

When they got ready to leave, they were walking over to the gangway and I was knitting and they stopped and sort of gathered around and I guess somebody in the group was a knitter, because they were talking and looking at my project. They all reached down to feel the yarn (which I never mind, I love feeling projects with a nice yarn) and one of the men drew on what, thinking of my tētis, was probably his entire stock of English and gave me a big smile and a thumbs up and said, "Good! Good!"

"Throw That Guy into the bay

John Kanaka-naka too-rye-ay

That would really make my day

John Kanaka-naka too-rye-ay"

Full song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs9qPWH7zy4

Last night was an overnight on board The Sloop with N, D, M and AY. As so often happens, we got talking about That Guy and how painful he is, so when we sat down to sing chanteys at night, we worked him into one of them. This is in the grand tradition of chanteys, where the chanteyman writes additional verses to suit the group, invoking injokes and experiences they've shared.

After That Guy opened up the museum this morning, insulting the crap out of me in the process, we sang our own version all the way back to stow our gear on the CGC. It was therapeutic.

Last night's group included two Cub Scout packs, a Boy Scout troop, and five members of the Young Marines program. (A friend made a request for pictures of their butts before I explained that it's a program for kids, and that I did not mean of-age members of the military.)

The Boy Scouts got there nice and early, in time to be waiting for us when we brought our own stuff over, and one of the moms saw M and I and went, "Ooooh, Girl Scouts!" I was very confused for a second and then said, "Nope, Overnight Leaders". She later apologized, which she didn't need to do, but it was pretty funny.

One of the Boy Scouts had a green cast that went from his elbow all the way to his fingertips, and we ended up calling him Lefty- I have no idea what his name was. We do an activity with nearly all our groups to help them learn the directions on a ship, and we call it Sailor Says. It's Simon Says with ship directions. They bow to the bow, turn to the stern, point to port and stomp to starboard. There are also commands for "arms aloft" where they stick their arms in the air, and "down on the deck" where they crouch down. When Chief N. called out "Point to port" this kid stuck out his whole hand- the one in the cast- and N teased him about not pointing. It was like MIcheal in The Novel.

Our Young Marines group was kind of weird- nice enough, and scrupulously polite, but never where we needed them to be. They "anticipated" directions that we were never going to give, and the leaders kept wandering off with their kids. Not off the ship, just... away from the group. We have no idea where to or why they did it.

It was not they who we had to go tell off at night, though. About 11:30, there was a pounding sound from the gun deck, which we could hear clearly enough, as we were sleeping in the midshipmen's cabin, and we thought somebody was screwing around with the guns. Turns out they had improvised a game of Spoons, and they were whacking the Captain's table. The first time, N. D and I all went up together to see what the heck, and we laughed with them about it. When they didn't take us seriously, I had to go back up and be more stern.

Yesterday, this visitor, an older white guy, sidled up to me cleaning the capstan and asked me where we kept the "n**ger heads". He meant capstan bars. I froze. He was wearing this awful, conspiratorial look which I read as "We're both good, un-pc white people, we can use that word. It's just history, right?"

I said "Shockingly, we don't call them that. They're over there." Boy, was I happy when he left.

That was the same day that a group of 8th graders got themselves banned from ringing the bell. Three groups of kids rang it at top volume, so I cut them all off and stood against it until their group left.

I'm writing to you today from the Sloop. The security desk in the museum, to be precise, where I just stamped the tickets of a group of six kids who are either liberal Amish or Old Order Mennonites. I didn't ask which, but they were speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. Except for one phrase- one of the girls, mid sentence, used the phrase "epic fail" and I did an epic double-take. 

I had not guessed they would know that phrase. Then again, they're touring a sloop of war, so maybe they're not as conservative as their "coffee strainers*" suggest?

Other than that, I'm practicing my capstan tour, surviving my most difficult co-worker, and moved into a stateroom of my very own on the CGC yesterday. And tonight? Chinese food. It's a god day.

Sadly, it wasn't grog. That would have been very appropriate, but instead Jem, C. and I went for Miller, in one of those large tube-y things.

Let me begin at the beginning: With the fact that it is Memorial Day, although our work schedule has the date clearly marked "Labor Day" and I was on the ship while my parents took my two best friends canoeing. Hmm, I thought that was spelled with two o's. Perhaps because I'm still on the tipsy end of things. 

It could have been worse, though, because we get paid double on holidays and I get the added bonus of not having to drive back home tonight. My commute is easily over an hour, and with the holiday traffic, I think I'd be on the road a good deal longer than that. And I can only imagine what tomorrow morning would have looked like! As it is, I'll be spending the night on the CGC, and I can get up an hour before work starts and still have time to lie around.

I was so thoroughly on the ball today that I was at work almost half an hour early (the roads were freakishly empty) and we had the ship and museum set up entirely by 0945. Being able to chill and talk is a nice treat.

Well, it wasn't as busy a day as I had expected it to be, but we did well, and I was treated to quite an array of patriotic clothing in various stages of horrible. Red, white and blue ribbons in a little girl's hair are cute. So are little sundresses with red, with and blue accents. Wearing the American flag practically as a t-shirt, however... perhaps overkill. I'd say flag shorts are likely a mistake as well.

But people were nice, I had an actual group for my presentation on the naval diet, and I got to watch Jem give a really fun capstan presentation. We had a few people ask about ghosts on the ship, and I wish I could stop right here and regale you with a great ghost story, but there just aren't any. We made one up, and I'll have to come up with an appropriate pseudonym for the gentleman involved, because it's worth sharing in another post.

Notable visitors included the guy who tried to tell me that the Civil War was fought in the 1840s. I felt kind of bad for him, because he kept volunteering "facts" about the ship and American history that were entirely wrong. (He was American, or the story wouldn't be remarkable. I don't expect foreign visitors to know, necessarily. ) I'm not sure why he didn't just shut up. It was kind of embarrassing after a while, since he kept going "Right?" and being wrong. No, this ship was never a slaver. Yes, it's 160 years old. No, no engines. That kind of thing.

He was rivaled by the perfectly pleasant family who wanted audioguides, but didn't want to shut up and let me tell them how to use the things, and then asked me the same questions like four times.

I got off well before close, but since I like the crew and C., Jem and I had dinner plans, I stuck around and helped close up.

Since C. hasn't gone grocery shopping and she lives on the ship, she and Jem and I went up the street to a beer garden. Nice place, really. We ordered a tube of beer so high (110 ounces or so) that other customers made jokes about it and somebody on the street stopped to ask what it was and how he could get one. We swapped stories (okay, only one) about people driving into harbors, and chatted about notable fires in American history. (Mrs. O'Leary's cow was innocent!)