I thought I had written before in my recent journals about the time in early 1986 when I was on crutches for a while. My leg had started hurting when I was still assigned to the USS Taylor FFG 50 and several months later I was attending Basic Electricity and Electronics school at the United States Navy training command in Orlando Florida and I finally decided to go see a doctor about it. At one point after that, the doctor wanted to me to use crutches for a while. I can remember that I was still at Orlando because a woman whose last name was Sargent and who was also a United States Navy sailor attending that school asked me one day where my crutches were because I wasn't using them to walk around with outside. My memory, real or artificial of sitting in that small office in 1989 with the other United States Navy petty officer's as a temporary assignment was associated with that same medical condition. I had surgery for that condition in April 1989 so that memory of sitting in the office would have been after that and before September 1989.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 03/24/07 3:52 AM
I find myself thinking of some "memories" of when I was assigned to the USS Wainwright. The ship had left port for a short regional deployment and I stayed back because I had a medical appointment on base. Or something like that. Not really sure why I didn't leave with the ship but it was because of some appointment on base. After that appointment, there was a period before the ship was due back when I was assigned to work in an office there on base. I liked the assignment because I had to wear my dress uniform and I liked that because I got to wear all my ribbons. I didn't have any ribbons until we were in the Persian Gulf and so most of my ribbons were from that Operation Praying Mantis combat engagement. There were two other petty officers in the office; they might have been CPO's, but maybe Petty Officer First Class's. They didn't really have any work for me to do in there so they had me crumpling up pages of documents that were going into a burn bag because they were classified. They told me to take my time and pace myself because they didn't have any other work for me but I "remember" that I went through all the documents too soon and then didn't have anything to do. But then I was watching one of them typing up some regular report on a computer and he didn't know how to touch type so I volunteered to type it for him. I think the word processor was Gemstar. He told me I had saved him a lot of time. I had to leave and report back to the Wainwright the next day I think.
[ JOURNAL ARCHIVE 24 March 2007 excerpt ends ]
