Beach Tale: Navy SEALS

A True Story from the Military Spouse Trenches

          Laden with pictures of my husband’s latest naval assignment onboard an amphibious assault ship, I returned to my landlocked (and Navy-ignorant) hometown prepared to brag about our exciting Navy life.  One day at lunch with my parent’s friends, I proudly showed off the pictures of the ship and explained, in what I thought were layman’s terms, about the floodable well deck in the back which opened up and filled with water, enabling sea-going equipment to float in and out as needed.   

          “This is so that the SEALs can go in and out,” I explained to one rather dotty and hard-of-hearing woman of advanced years.  SEALs, of course, are the Sea/Air/Land sailors who handle the amphibious equipment.   (This was also many years ago, before the Navy SEALS became notorious for ridding the world of evil by taking out the likes of  Somalian pirates and Osama bin Laden, so it was a rather obscure reference for a non-Navy person, I guess.)   

          When the elderly woman passed the pictures along to the equally deaf gentleman next to her, she pointed to the one taken of the back of the ship and said, rather loudly, “And this is where they load the whales.”   
          Huh?
          It took some questioning and puzzling, but I eventually followed her twisted trail of logic:  living as close to Sea World (in Ohio) as we were, the woman related seals (the cute, blubbery, whiskered mammals) and whales to Sea World and had jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the U.S. Navy was personally responsible for transporting Shamu the Killer Whale to and from this winter home in Florida.  In actuality, he flew in his own private jet.  How do I know this?  Because I spent three summers as a cook in one of the restaurants in Sea World in Hudson, Ohio.  But that's another story for another day.

         BTW, Sea World in Ohio no longer exists, so don't bother googling it.  You're going to have to trust me on this.