Post a happy memory you use to mitigate depression.

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Here's mine. Sorry about how long it is.


A happy memory



I am a high functioning autistic with a good memory (and awful social skills). This story is a pretty accurate representation of what really happened. The test itself is burned into my mind, and is precisely what happened. This is not a story of pride. All LPD Austin class ships have been decommissioned. The knowledge I used on the test this story focuses on is completely useless. I was driven to accumulate this knowledge by bullying, alienation, and my own anger, and it brings me no sense of pride. This is a story of revenge, served very cold upon twelve unwitting men who walked into a room bored and uninterested. They left that room bewildered and perhaps a little humiliated.
All names in this story have been changed.

A new ship:

My arms had finally healed after breaking both of them rollerblading on the boardwalk at Virginia Beach. My time spent healing at the Navy’s Shoreside Intermediate Maintenance Activity in Norfolk had come to an end. I was assigned to my new command, the USS Nashville, sister ship to my first ship, the USS Austin. After boarding my new ship, I headed straight down to the aft engineroom to familiarize myself. It was exactly the same as the Austin’s engineroom, down to the placement of the smallest valve. Home for me, with new faces. I knew every valve and every inch of piping before I even stepped on board the ship, due to my previous work on board the Austin. I introduced myself to the fire room watch, in expectation that I would be assuming the duties of a Fire Room Supervisor, also known as Boiler Technician of the Watch (BTOW), or perhaps the next position down, as a lower-levelman. My qualifications guaranteed a high position on the watch team.

Imagine my surprise when the division chief BTC Glenn informed me I was to work in the ship's laboratory! I had no experience working there and thought they were wasting my considerable experience. I was introduced to BT2 Abrams, the petty officer in charge of the laboratory, and BT3 Weaver, the only other person working in the laboratory. They needed a third person in order to ditch a 6 hours on, 6 hours off watch rotation and assume a normal 4 hours on, 8 hours off watch. I assume they picked the first person to come along to fill the position. Luckily, that person was me.

A week later found me attending the Supervisory Boilerwater/Feedwater school located on base. It covered all of the subjects necessary to prepare a person for testing, treating and maintaining a ship’s boilers. The other schools required to work in a ship's laboratory such as fuel oil and lube oil analysis I had already completed while working aboard the USS Austin.

I remember the first day walking into the school and seeing that I was the lowest ranked sailor by far. All of the other students were chiefs (E-7) and above, up to a Commander (O-5). Rarefied company. I didn't put much effort into the class, I've always been able to absorb facts without trying. As long as I stayed awake I was going to do well on the final exam.

At the end of the course we took our exam, easy as I had expected. Didn't bother studying. I remember the instructor getting excited about our scores. “Well Commander _____ scored the highest, no surprise there,” he said. The commander was a prissy, fussy little man that I was quite sure had studied. Cheating by my standards. “But it was almost a tie! BT3 here missed a single question which put him in second place.” I got some odd looks from the other, much higher ranking students. Some scruffy, half-asleep, low ranking kid had beaten all of them. I felt annoyed that the commander had beaten me.

After the school, it was back to the Nashville. The boilers were cold so I couldn't do many of the testing and treatment tasks associated with running the laboratory, but I could at least see the paperwork, find all of our fuel, water, and lube oil tanks, and run some practice tests. BT2 Abrams wasn't the brightest fellow, but he did a decent job showing me the routines. Some days later the Nashville set out to sea for a one and a half month training deployment.

Immediately after firing up the boilers, my training began in earnest. Even though I knew theoretically all the responsibilities of standing a laboratory watch, I needed to see how all the pieces fit together. I learned how to communicate with the forward fireroom in order to transfer fuel, how to inject treatment chemicals into the boilers, how to fill the continuous treatment tank with hydrazine, trisodium phosphate, and caustic soda and how to test everything. I kept BT2 Abrams and BT3 Weaver very busy with questions and requests to show me different tasks.

Then, 7 days after we had gotten underway, something out of the ordinary happened.
BT2 Abrams wife went into labor. She was premature; BT2 had been expecting to be back from deployment before the baby's birth. He was in a dilemma. He had to get home, but it would be impossible to run the ship’s laboratory with only BT3 Weaver- he would have to be on watch for 24 hours a day. Our division chief, BTC Glenn knew that I had been a BTOW on my previous ship, which meant that I had a pretty good operating knowledge of the boilers and associated machinery. He made an audacious proposal to the Chief Engineer. “Lets see if the new kid can handle the job” I imagine him saying to the CE. “he was a BTOW on the Austin. We should try to get BT2 Abrams home”

This idea was preposterous. Allowing someone with seven days of sea time to run the ship's laboratory, to be responsible for the treatment and care of the propulsion boilers, to transfer fuel oil, test lube oil, feedwater, condensate, and boilerwater, with such little experience would be near lunacy. Ridiculous. This was the Navy, I should have at least a couple months of experience before anyone would even consider testing me for the position.

BTC Glenn must have really pushed the Chief Engineer, reminding him about my experience as a BTOW. However he did it, he managed to talk the Chief Engineer into asking the Captain if I could replace BT2 so he could be choppered home to be with his wife during her delivery.

The Chief Engineer would have said something to the Captain like “This guy did really good in his boilerwater/feedwater school and he was a BTOW on the Austin. He can probably handle working the lab.”

“Ok Chief, we'll test this BT3 of yours, but I'm bringing every officer that isn't asleep to do a round robin, and he better do DAMN well or I'm not letting him near the boilers.” I imagine the Captain telling the Chief Engineer.

Forty five minutes later found me entering the engineering log room, the Chief Engineer's office. His domain, his castle. 3 tables were set in a horse shoe shape with a single chair placed in the center. Sitting at the top of the horse shoe and directly in front of the lone chair was the captain. Off to the right sat the Chief Engineer, and the rest of the chairs were taken up with 10 junior officers. I sat in the lone chair in the center. Behind me and to the right sat BT2 Abrams, the only other non-officer in the room. His forehead was creased with lines and he was clearly focused inward on his worries. The Captain looked alert and well rested. He clearly was going to find out whether I was worthy of managing the laboratory or not. He wasn't going to go easy on me. The Chief Engineer looked distracted. The Chief Engineer's job is the most demanding of all the officer positions on a ship, and he had many other things he should be doing. The ten junior officers looked sleepy, bored, or annoyed, a couple were joking with each other. None were taking this exam seriously. And really, why should they? This was likely the first time they had been called out to do an emergency round robin exam, but it was for a low ranking enlisted kid just barely into his twenties. I'd likely bomb the test and in five or ten minutes they would be on their way.

This is where it becomes interesting. I had a secret. The Captain and the Chief Engineer were the most informed about me. They knew that despite my low rank I had been a BTOW and that I had enough knowledge to operate the boilers. They both knew I was a bit more learned than my rank would suggest. The other ten officers only knew that they faced a lowly E-4 barely old enough to drink, with only seven days of sea time on their ship. Hardly worth their time.

Regardless of what they thought they saw, they were wrong. I wasn't just a BTOW that knew the boilers and associated machinery. I wasn't just a lowly E-4 with seven days of sea time.

I was a monster that towered over them.

The making of a monster:


I suppose this starts while I was a child. My father, who is a plumber, would take me to work occasionally starting at age four. I was interested in the machines in the contractor’s work shop. An enormous circular cutting saw caught my attention and my dad explained to me that its blade had exploded not long ago, killing the man using it. He turned it on and frightened me with its roar. Over the years I learned the basics of plumbing, how to cut and thread pipe, and how to solder.

Dad purchased a six acre plot of land, and at twelve years old he and I started building our first house. Now I was learning about running electrical wiring, pouring cement foundations, and general carpentry skills. After completion of this first house, we started on a much larger second house to accommodate all of the children. We were very cramped in that first house. Often a vehicle or electrical generator would break down and I would help him with repairs, learning the different parts of engines and transmissions, brakes and electrical systems.

In high school I signed up for college prep courses, not really planning on going to college, but wanting to learn more than the basics. I enjoyed physics, algebra II, trigonometry, and english. Using what I learned about electrical circuits, I remember converting a twelve volt battery to run my Nintendo and a small television for use when our generator was shut off at night.

In tenth grade I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test. Any high school student taking college prep courses could pretty easily score 100% on all sections- with the exception of one. That one section tested a person’s coding speed, how quickly and accurately you can find a number in a table. About halfway through that sub test I figured out a way to cheat. Well sort of. I took a single key code out of the table, scanned through the test and quickly answered every matching word with its key number. Completing the test this way increased my speed by at least four times, but I had wasted much of my time before discovering this trick. I scored in the 98th percentile.

2 years later when I retook the test at the Navy recruiting center, I remembered this trick and scored in the 99th percentile. I likely answered every question correctly. This sub test has since been removed from today’s ASVAB, I suspect because it could be manipulated the way I did.

Acknowledging the fact that I would probably not make it through college, due to my already budding alcoholism, I was won over when a Navy recruiter talked to me about the Navy’s Nuclear Power program. I would be automatically promoted following completion of my A-school, and qualify for a significant reenlistment bonus if I decided to do so. Sounded good to me so I decided to go for it.

After boot camp I attended the first of the Nuclear field’s schools, the Machinist Mate A-school. It was easy. I learned about the steam cycle, different types of boilers, how to operate, maintain, and repair ship propulsion machinery, auxiliary equipment, and outside machinery. Upon completion of this school I was promoted to Petty Officer Third class (E-4) and began the second school, Nuclear Power School. This is the school that goes into mathematics, nuclear physics, electrical power theory and chemistry, among others. Regretfully I hadn’t attended my high school chemistry class. I dropped out halfway through, not feeling too sorry for myself, since I was the last person remaining out of my boot camp division. I’d made it further than any of the others. The attrition rate at that time for the nuclear field was 80%.

In February of 1994 I joined the USS Austin, LPD-4. Upon boarding I scrambled down to the engineroom to get my first glimpse of a real, operating steam plant. My welcome was less than pleasant. Firstly, I was what they referred to as a “Push button Petty Officer”. Meaning that I hadn’t worked my way up the ladder, and didn’t really deserve my rank. Secondly I was an ex nuke; I suppose many ex nukes are considered “uppity” and think themselves better than the common sailor. I was referred to as a “Puke”, a corruption of “Nuke”. These guys had worked their way up from E-1 and despised all push button petty officers, especially Pukes. I was not going to make any friends here. Thirdly, I am not an outgoing type, quite the opposite. I would never be one of the “good old boy” gang. Unless I was talking about engineering, I had no common interests with them, and they in turn had no interest in teaching me about the engineroom since I was a “Puke”.

I was assigned the most menial of tasks, taking out the garbage, painting, washing the deck plates. All the while being made fun of. The first time I was told to take readings on the boiler and machinery no one would show me where the gauges were located. I had to utilize my education from Machinist Mate A-school to deduce the location of them. After 45 minutes I still couldn’t find one of the gauges, the desuperheater outlet temperature. I approached the BTOW asking for help. He jumped up, got in my face and started yelling that he had never seen someone take so long to get readings and that I was a worthless piece of s**t. He was physically intimidating. Later on that day, I was on the lower level of the engineroom looking around, and someone on the upper level dumped a bucket of cold, dirty mop water over my head. This happened multiple times over the next year.

Any crappy job that needed done, it was always “make the Puke do it”. I was going to have to learn this engineroom on my own, without help. This is when my anger started. Somehow, I was going to show them. I was going to show them all. They would all learn to respect me.
An interesting aspect of my personality showed up during that first year and a half on the Austin. The angrier I got, the harder I would focus and work on whatever job I was doing. I flogged myself to learn everything possible about the engineroom, and would throw myself into any repairs or maintenance being performed.

Three months after arriving on the ship I qualified for the lowest watch position- Messenger. I took readings on the boiler and all of the machinery, would check oil levels and bearing temperatures, keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

Soon after starting one of my first watches, I became absolutely sure that we had a fuel leak somewhere. Diesel floating on top of bilge water was contacting the high pressure steam lines behind the boiler and flashing into vapor. Dangerous, a single spark would ignite the vapor and possibly burn down the entire engineroom. I informed the BTOW, BT1 Byron, of the problem but he brushed me off, telling me I was wrong. After spending the entire day tracing out the fuel system and finding no leaks I finally gave up. The next day BT1 Byron apologized to me. He had lifted up a deck plate and found a significant fuel leak on a section of piping that I hadn't known about. Shortly after I discovered that, I found the fuel oil service pump showing no oil on it's dipstick. It's lube oil cooler had been re-assembled improperly and it was pouring out oil. Over the months I earned the nickname “Dr. Destructo” because I would find so many problems in the engineroom.

The bullying and degradation never let up. One time I found a main feed pump running extremely hot. The cooling water to the lube oil cooler was shut and all of the bearings were ne aring temperatures that would start damaging the bearings. On top of that, the oil was emulsified with water. I let the BTOW, one of the worst of my bullies know, and he just shrugged me off. “Whatever, you f*****g Puke.” Soon after, I took engineroom readings, logging the high temperatures and circling them in red ink, as was required by navy rules. The BTOW went ballistic when I gave him the log. He poked me in the chest, hard. “Why the f**k did you write in those temps, you f*****g f**k?” He made me rewrite the entire day's log and enter false temperatures for the main feed pump. Later I found that he was trying to evaporate the water out of the oil by raising its temperature because he and his “Bro's” on watch were too lazy to change the oil out.

Luckily the senior ranking petty officers in my chain of command were seeing me for who I was, not just a Puke. “Petty officer Marquardt's short time on board is characterized by a strong desire to learn, a high level of initiative and a readiness to volunteer for any assignment. He requires minimal supervision and is capable of assisting in the performance of complex repairs. Petty Officer Marquardt has already proven himself as a valuable asset to B (Boilers) division. His aggressiveness, initiative and willingness to go that extra mile has earned him the respect of both peers and superiors alike.” This was written on my first performance evaluation report. I don't know what peers my chief was referring to, but it was nice to see that all my hard work had not gone unnoticed by my superiors.

All Navy ships are required to have a minimum number of sailors that have undergone specific training vital to a ship's operation. For instance, a ship may need to have a minimum of two people trained in “Shipboard Gauge Calibration”, or a minimum of 6 people trained in “Engineering Fuels and Lube Oils”. Since I was an ex-Nuke with over five years left in my enlistment, that meant I would be on board the ship for a full five years before getting a shore-side post, whereas everyone else in Engineering Department had 2 or 4 year enlistments. Less time than that spent aboard, when you factor in boot camp and any schooling they may have undergone. Combine my five year tour of duty with my high test scores (I would have needed relatively high scores to enter the nuclear field), and I was the perfect candidate to heap schools on. I completed a total of 7 schools. All of the engineering related schools, with the exception of Supervisory Boilerwater / Feedwater school.

I was familiar with the engineroom now and had a decent knowledge of how the different systems worked, but I had no idea how some specific components looked and functioned inside. I finally moved up to the second lowest watch position, Upper Levelman. My watch now consisted of keeping an eye on the forced draft blowers and taking feed control into local manual control if needed. Not very demanding. I had plenty of time to devote to studying. The only reading material allowed on watch were technical manuals, so I hit the books, and hit them hard. I learned how the Deaerating Feed Tank (DFT) worked, what the insides looked like. I studied how the constant pressure regulators and governors worked. I devoured every scrap of information on every piece of equipment we had.

I was starting to take the initiative to do repairs, such as breaking open our emergency feed pump and replacing its check valve cartridges. I was a maniac during repairs, working as hard and fast as I could, sweat filling my boots so that every step would cause a bit to squirt out the tops. My ability to focus intently on the task at hand and my good memory enabled me to confidently disassemble and reassemble equipment, only rarely needing to refer to its technical manual. Repairing broken equipment came naturally to me as if I had been born to do it, which, in a way, I had. One time while working on a pump I came slithering out of the bilge covered in oil and water. “You. Are. No. s**t.” said my arc-nemesis, the BTOW that so enjoyed poking me in the chest. The one that savored berating me for being a ret*d Puke. The first, and only, show of respect -ever- from the men that enjoyed sh*****g on me. I ignored him. He hadn't seen anything yet. The refrain constantly repeated in my mind “I'll show you, I'll show you all. I'll crush you.”

I was assigned the duty of Damage Control Petty Officer. It had to be filled by a petty officer. This was a job hated by all, so of course it was given to me. I was required to perform preventive maintenance and testing on all firefighting and damage control equipment. It even extended to keeping the ventilation ducting clean and making sure the watertight doors worked properly. My firm commitment to do the job right resulted in a perfect score during a PEB inspection. A tedious, boring job, but the knowledge would come in handy later.

The Austin entered dry-dock for the shipyard and yet again I got handed a job requiring a petty officer and hated by everyone. Fire Watch Supervisor. I had to organize and dispatch twenty sailors to accompany civilian welders while they performed their jobs. Many small fires were created when sparks generated from welding or cutting metal hit the oily debris in the bilge, so each fire watch was issued a fire extinguisher and UV protective goggles. One time, while making my rounds of the the hot work (welding/cutting) being done, I noticed Fireman Roberts sleeping away while a small fire burned in the bilge. I shook his shoulder and yelled at him to put the damn fire out. Being one of the “good 'ol boys” clique that considered me worthless, he grabbed my shirt, ripping it and popping several buttons off. “f**k you, Puke!” he yelled. He put the fire out and I left. I couldn't wait for the shipyard to be over. I needed to be in the engineroom learning, not trying to keep twenty subordinates awake.

During the shipyard, the engineroom had been entirely repainted in white. This painting erased all of the stenciled piping identification and valve numbering. You guessed it. My job yet again. It took me over a month to identify and stencil every single valve and to go over every inch of piping, stenciling the pipe's direction of flow and what system it was a part of. I also had to identify and stencil each piece of equipment. At the time I was furious at having to do such a huge task by myself. It turned out that my chief was thinking about the future. He had big plans for me. About halfway through the stenciling, things began to click into place. I was starting to understand the relationships between the differing systems. When I finally finished stenciling I knew every valve and every inch of all the piping. It took me a few days. I would dream at night about the engineroom and its systems and how they affected each other. During the day I would look over the piping and valves and imagine different scenarios such as how adding a large amount of cold condensate into the main engine hotwell would affect the DFT's pressure and how that would affect the main feed booster pumps and ultimately impact the main feed pumps. One day everything just clicked. I understood the fluid and thermal dynamics of the intertwined systems. I had built an organic model of the entire engineroom in my mind that I could manipulate, could see and actually feel how changing a parameter would affect the entirety of the rest of the systems. I owe a great debt to my chief for him making me stencil. I thought at the time it was pure grunt work. But now the engineroom held no more secrets for me.

It had been nine months since I stepped foot on board the Austin. My advancement up the watch standing ladder became blistering. People were starting to treat me differently now. They knew I was being groomed for a supervisory position. Immediately following the shipyard I was promoted to Burnerman, a position that required me to manually operate fuel flow to the boiler's burners and to throttle the steam going to the forced draft blowers, thus controlling combustion air. Occasionally I would need to change out burners and soot blow the boiler. This job required me to stand in one spot for the entirety of my watch, staring at the boiler's steam pressure gauge and keeping an eye on the exhaust gasses to ensure we weren't smoking from either lack of air or too much air. The Machinist Mates on throttle watch would often attempt to suck the boiler offline, or to lift the boiler's relief valves by opening or closing the main engine turbine's throttle valve as quickly as possible. I never let the boiler's pressure waver more than five psi no matter how fast they spun the throttles. This watch standing position was by far the most boring. I couldn't move more than three feet from the fuel oil control valve. I wasn't even allowed to read technical manuals to pass the time, so I would think up differing and exotic scenarios for the engineroom model in my mind. How could I transfer water from the DFT to the main engine hotwell? What would happen if the BTOW were to increase feed water flow while in the process of surface blowing the boiler? All watch long I spent lost in thought. I was incapable of small talk or chatter with my watch partners unless it involved engineering, so I had twelve hours a day to ruminate over these questions.

It didn't last long. I was promoted to Lower Levelman after only a month spent as Burnerman. Now my watch consisted of operating the main feed booster pumps, main feed pumps and fuel oil service pumps and most repairs.

One day I was relaxing in the air conditioned crew quarters, just soaking in the cool air before hitting the sack, when BT1 (now BTC, having advanced to E-7) Byron walks into the room clearly excited about something. “B division has the highest ASVAB score on the ship” he yelled. “Including the officers.” The ship had a crew of four hundred sailors and up to eight hundred marines. I don't know how he managed to get the test scores, they were supposed to be confidential. Before he could yell out who had the highest score, I caught his eye and shook my head slightly. I had bad enough relations with my co-workers. I certainly didn't want them to torment me about a stupid test score. BTC Byron's voice petered out and he sheepishly headed back up the stairs without spilling the beans.

Three months later I reached the top. I was promoted to Fire Room Supervisor, Boiler Technician Of the Watch, BTOW. I was also promoted to assistant work center supervisor, also known as the “Turn-To Petty Officer”. In layman’s terms, I was the person who assigned jobs to people and ensured they completed them. Any questions someone might have, they were to ask me. No longer was I being s**t on, I was the boss. Regretfully the worst of my tormenters had left the ship, either transferring to a shore-side job or finished their enlistment and gone back to being a civilian. In one year and four months I had gone from the lowest position on the watch team to the top. I have never heard of anyone accomplishing this faster. Most BTOWs were ten to twenty years older than my 22 years of age. My driven obsession to learn everything I could had finally paid off.

Over the next seven months I honed my abilities, using the ever present engineroom model in my mind to tweak operation of the boiler and equipment. I showed the rest of the watch team how to do things not included inside the Engineering Standard Operating Procedure manual, how to operate machinery outside of our written instructions. One time we went from a shut down, cross connected boiler, to all equipment operational and ready to split the engineering plants in four minutes flat, just because we could. The procedure would normally take over 15 minutes. My knowledge of the engineroom was so complete that I was assigned to the Engineering Casualty Control Team (ECCT), the 6 man team that ran drills on engineering department. Most of the people on the team were E-7 or higher, we even had a few officers. I was the only person that ranked below E-6 on that team. The green hat identifying me as part of the ECCT was my most prized possession.

I spent 7 glorious months free from my tormenters and free to perfect my skills, always improving on that little model in my head. Then, one day at Virginia Beach while rollerblading, I attempted a jump at about twenty five miles per hour over a steep ramp. My rollerblades caught on the top lip, pushing my legs up and behind me. I landed head first with my arms extended in front of me. I felt an enormous jolt of pain in my elbows and fifteen minutes later was barely able to carry my bag back to the car. It was very tricky driving back to the naval base, every turn of the steering wheel sent out shock waves of pain from my arms. I went back to the ship, took some ibuprofen, and went to sleep.

The next day was pretty humorous. The ship's biannual Physical Readiness Test (PRT) was happening today and my forearms had locked into a 90 degree position to my biceps. My elbows were extremely swollen and the slightest movement, even the tiny bounce caused from walking caused my elbows to scream in pain. I went to the ship's infirmary to let them know I couldn't do the PRT. The smarmy, self-important HM2 (Hospital Corpsman) said “well take some aspirin and if you can't do the pushups, you can at least do the situps and the run.” I explained to him that even walking hurt like hell. “You'll have to go to the base medical center then. And you better have something really wrong with your arms or you'll be in BIG trouble.” he replied. What a dick. I drove over to the base's hospital where they performed x rays on my elbows. Ugh, it really hurt trying to straighten out my arms for the exam.

The hospital gave me the x-rays and I took them back to the ship. I threw them at that bastard HM2. “Satisfied, you dick?” I didn't care about pissing him off. My x-rays showed green stick fractures running four or five inches up my humerus (upper arm bone) with quarter inch wide breaks at the elbow. When I'd taken that jump the day before, I had removed myself from shipboard duty. I would be spending the next year on shore, healing and doing physical therapy. I packed my bags and left the ship for good.

I had learned everything there was to know about the engineroom, I had attended all of the engineering related schools, I knew every detail about firefighting and damage control equipment and how to use them, and I knew every step of the Engineering Standard Operating Procedures manual by heart. The monster was complete.




The test:

The test starts out unremarkably. The Chief Engineer asks me a question he knows I can answer about the boilers. If he had taken the time to look at my personnel file, taken the time to look at dates and schools, calculated how long it had taken me to go from the lowest watch standing position to the highest, he would have just sat there silently smirking. Other officers began asking me about chemical limits and general engineroom knowledge. For the first five minutes everything was going normally, casually. I'd be asked a question then I'd provide the answer along with a “sir” at the end, as was expected of me. Not much effort was being put into the questions, the junior officers were mostly goofing around. The Captain was asking important but easy questions to make sure I knew the engineroom and laboratory basics. The Chief Engineer would throw in a token question now and then, but he was distracted. I would end each answer with a “sir”, as I was expected to.

Then, while of the midst of an answer and the customary “sir”, a junior officer interrupted me, stepping on my toes, by asking a question before I had fully finished my answer and “sir”. I retaliated by failing to address him as “sir” following my answer to him. A short silence followed, and officers that had previously been bored and uninterested suddenly became alert and focused on me, some of them probably thinking “who does this punk think he is?”

The pace of questions picks up. More questions about the engineroom and laboratory, but now they are asking obscure, sometimes theoretical questions. I've memorized the Naval Ship's Technical Manual for the laboratory, and I've learned over the past week how to use all of the laboratory's equipment. There is no gap in my knowledge of the laboratory. The engineroom questions are a joke. They don't know that I have a living, breathing model of the entire engineroom in my mind. I can manipulate any valve in the engineroom and both see and feel the pressure and temperature changes across the entirety of the systems. My answers are hammered down with precision and authority. Perhaps sensing that I am untouchable with regards to the engineroom and laboratory the officers turn to firefighting equipment and damage control systems. My answers come swiftly and decisively. No more “sir”s. The questions are coming too fast now to fit them in anyways.

About this time the Chief Engineer stops looking distracted. He's an old engineer. He's been doing this for 28 years. Only two more years until he retires. He knows what a BTOW should know. He knows what a laboratory supervisor should know. I am answering questions far outside the scope of my jobs now. Not only that, but I am answering with absolute conviction and no hesitation. He stops asking questions and sits back, a worried look on his face. I usually can’t divine people's emotions, but his face is a comic book of unease. Perhaps he can sense what is going to happen.

The questions keep flying. Now the junior officers are digging deep but I am focused tightly. My time in hell on the Austin has provided me with a mountain of facts. They should be asking important, relevant questions to establish my knowledge. Instead they are asking petty, obscure, arcane questions. Perhaps they are trying to show off how smart they are with these trivial, convoluted inquiries. I start contemptuously answering them in the middle of the long winded questions. Still no “sir”. They are wasting everyone's time. I don't bother hiding the cold contempt in my voice.

The captain notices and blurts out a question. He hasn't thought it out and it's worded wrong; it makes no sense. I ask him to rephrase it. “What piece of firefighting equipment is found only in the engineroom?” he asks. “27 pound PKP bottle” I reply. This has been the only hiccup in the nonstop question and answer. He sits back and stops asking questions. I don't find this suspicious until later. He's starting to look annoyed. I should withhold the disdain in my voice, but the junior officers aren’t in my chain of command, and they are annoying me.

The junior officers continue to ask their irrelevant questions, just barely falling into the category of engineering for about ten more minutes. I continue to cut them short with my replies. I brush aside the questions like I would flies. The ten of them are struggling to keep up a stream.

Suddenly the Captain leans forward. He has been thinking furiously the past few minutes. He asks too loudly, startling the others, the first of seven questions. His neck veins are bulging. He won't be satisfied with a “sir”. He means to pound me into the ground with a question I can’t answer. His questions come with no hesitation, fully thought out, relevant, very difficult questions. I'm very impressed. This man has the ability to expand his mind in order to hold onto seven fully realized, completely divergent questions and to keep them in logical order, holding the most difficult for last. He can actively hold onto multiple pieces of transitory information. I will never be able to do a trick like that. Our intelligences are polar opposites. I can concentrate my mind into a narrow, focused beam indefinitely, but can only concentrate on a single task at a time. Perhaps he is incapable of doing what I can do.

His heated questions make me go cold. My answers fall like frozen, perfect diamonds. He sits back, deflated. The room goes silent and I look about the tables eagerly. Only the Chief Engineer will meet my gaze, and he isn't asking. He looks even more worried now. I don't know why. I am fully focused and wanting more, impatient to beat them down. It has only been twenty minutes. I have yet to answer a question wrong, and I know that I am unstoppable.

In the complete silence a whisper that is heard by everyone in the room. “Jesus Christ, is there anything this guy doesn't know?” asks one of the junior officers.

I feel euphoric. I feel like I am glowing brightly. This emotion is so strong that I can still feel it vividly nearly twenty years later. I look back at BT2 Arnold, but he is still lost in his worrisome thoughts. He hasn't heard a word. I am alone in my victory.

Three seconds go by, then four. The captain suddenly shifts his chair back. I look at him and can see that he has already dismissed this odd incident and moved on, in his mind. He is a resilient, busy man, and has no time to waste, even on something as peculiar as myself. He walks out the door without looking at me, without saying “congratulations” or even “you passed”. Those words would be redundant. They would hang in the air foolishly. No one looks at me or says anything. The junior officers follow the Captain out in ones and twos, some of them muttering to each other, a couple shaking their heads.

The Chief Engineer's face finally relaxes. He gives me a small smile then says “Well then, let’s get you started.”

Over the two years that I spent with that chief engineer, he always treated me with respect, near equals. Always noticed when I entered his office and would stop whatever he was doing to attend to me. Unheard of, considering the gulf in our ranks. He even tried to joke with me several times but I am broken that way. He would occasionally give me special projects to do that required absolute precision, such as designing custom cabinets to fit underneath stairwells. I missed him when he finally retired.


It wasn't until later that I understood why I was so happy at the end of this test. These weren't the same men who had tormented and alienated me on the Austin, but it didn’t matter.
I had finally shown them.
I had shown them all.
I had used my knowledge and crushed them beneath my heel. In my mind I had finally defeated the men that had made my life miserable for almost two years.

A positive memory would not make me feel better when I'm depressed. It would make me feel worse, because it's in the past, and in depression, I would be certain nothing good like that was ever going to happen to me again.

No, memories only make my depression worse. I scrape and scratch at my violin for days and let it do the talking and thinking.

OP. That was a good memory of yours to read as a story.
I simply recall many walks in the forest, when I need to retreat into memories.

nice read. I can't believe I read all of that. you have one heck of a memory. emu egg my footie.

oh, to be able to do that grandin-esque "thinking in pictures" thing. life would be much easier that way.

Happy memory, huh? Well, I used to live in Trinidad & Tobago. I was around one year old when "The Lonely Bull" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass was a hit. When it came on the radio I used to jump up and down, completely happy, completely free. Of course these are vague memories but I seem to remember my father whistling the tune, too. Just thinking about my little legs attempting to dance to this track tickles me. It's cute. And rare.

BTW, thinking of this happy thought doesn't mitigate my depression. It's still there. The fact that I used to be happy simply illustrates that perhaps those days are over and I'm essentially done.