Hughie in His Own Words (HIHOW) Part 1 - Practical Joke at Flight School

We had press board, stand up lockers for our clothes. It was mandatory to keep our lockers locked. We would lose keys and spend hours trying to unlock our lockers. So most of us would tie our key on a long string and hang it inside, near one of the air holes. We would then reach a finger through the air hole, and pull t
he key up, unlock it and put the key back. 

One day, I sneaked back to the barracks and cut a lot of the strings. It was fun watching them turning their lockers upside down to get their keys. 

 

They found out that I had cut the strings, so that night they quietly leaned a 50-gallon drum against my locked door and filled it with water. 

 

When I got up the next morning, I opened the door and was met with a drum spilling water all over me and my room. I had about six inche
s of water in my room. During the day most of the water seeped out, but it left the deck wet. 

 

That evening was inspection time. The inspector looked in my room and said something like this, “I can see that you swabbed your room, so I am going to give you a ‘Smart Shipshape.’” 

 

You should have heard those other midshipmen groan and moan about that!