The Absent Uncle: Wake-up calls

This morning I was reminded of an old memory from my Navy boot camp days. Hopefully, I can tie it together so you can see both the humor and connection.

While in boot camp, in San Diego, September 1971, I was part of Company 305 – my boot camp company. It was comprised of about 60 new recruits going through boot camp together. There were so many routines, trainings, drills, and all were quite foreign to our lives prior to arriving in San Diego. But today’s column is about wake-up calls.  

One of the routines was someone had to be awake all night on “fire watch”. It was rotated and each shift was two hours as I remember. No one was very excited about losing two hours’ sleep, but along with this was the chore of waking up one of our fellow recruits (by his request) on the even hours (2200, 2400, 0200, 0400) throughout the night.

He was a big guy, from Illinois. I am of good size myself, however, when told of my duty to wake him up from a sound sleep – I really wasn’t looking forward to it. But at the appointed hour of my watch I touched his shoulder, told him the time, and was rewarded with a “thanks man”. He rolled over and went back to sleep. 

Fast forward to today. I am an early riser, always have been, probably always will be. At our house we set no wake-up alarms. I’m up. My wife just sets the alarm by telling me the night before what time to rouse her.   I do my duty (as trained by the USN) and know by her response (give me 15 or 30 minutes), close the bedroom door or not, and do the requested follow up.

As for my training provided by the USN, my wife says, thanks!