In The Navy (BE&E), Part 2

BE&E (Basic Electronics) finally opened its doors to me, which was great. Of all my time in the Navy, this was the best and least stressful. In retrospect, that had to be by design. It was a chance to unwind after boot camp and get your head ready to soak in the basic knowledge you would need for all of the schools that followed. Makes sense to me now.

I stayed in the same barracks for the rest of my time at Great Lakes. The BE&E school was also a fairly new brick building right across the street from the barracks and was almost perfectly square, which I always thought odd. School was a little bizarre, but lent itself to the stress free atmosphere I mentioned before.

We (the class) would arrive in the morning and the teacher would lecture us on the day’s topic. We started with the bare basics, most of which I had already learned in High School. It was mostly review for me, which worked out great. Once we finished the morning lecture, we were left to complete a lab or test at our own pace, for the rest of the day. I almost always went directly to the test and completed/passed it on the first attempt. If you failed it, you got to go review the book and then retake the test the same day.

I had most afternoons off, because once you finished the test and passed, you were done for the day. I found myself in the company of a few guys who had basically the same prior education that I’d had and we were almost always done for the day around lunch time. We wound up friends and would head down to the Lake Michigan shore, a short walk down a hill, from the barracks. I wouldn’t say I made any great friends here, but they were good people and having someone to goof around with was cool. We would just go down to the beach and swim if the water wasn’t too smelly. Mostly we hung out combing the beach up and down as it paralleled the base itself. Bored.

Looking for chicks was a waste of time; you had to get off base for that. Then they were always skanks anywhere near the base. Once you got farther out, they were all jail-bait. All the older gals were off to college.

I did take my friends up to my secluded spot on the roof one day that summer. I was saddened when one of the guys pulled out a joint. It was forbidden in the Navy and they had this new “Zero Tolerance” policy that was rammed down our throats regularly. I think he smoked his joint alone, I know I didn’t partake. Pot makes me dizzy and sick to my belly. Where did he get it anyway??