skit #28: plopped

All four hundred cadets obediently sat themselves in the lecture hall, not a querulous peep of the foul sweat such heat brings. Cadet Shellings and Cadet Carolli relayed nervous pheromones back and forth and back, lucid even over the noisome traffic of male stink. Midshipman Voght, a boy perhaps a year older than his students, mounted the podium to commence instruction.

The semaphore alphabet was reviewed twice with the cadets before Voght wrote phrases on the board: class, cadet, learn, navy. The cadets' flags waved wildly, saying nothing. Voght continued: humid, stink, zoo, toilet. The astute students' snickering crescendoed as they progressed through the signals. A sly grin curled across the instructor's unmustachable lip as he conducted his crass opera.

After projecting a brief slideshow of the history of semaphore, Midshipman Voght convincingly emphasized its relevance in today's modern Navy. Cadets were dismissed after flagging a few letters of Voght's choosing. Four hundred of four hundred cadets bore certifiable proficiency in semaphore, Cadet Shellings and Cadet Carolli included.

Time proved Midshipman Voght correct. The radio was unresponsive, the fuel reserves dwindled, and the jet was approaching the aircraft carrier runway out of desperation. Ensign Shellings flagged hazily-recalled semaphores to the incoming pilot, his still-handsome Naval Aviator Carolli. They both got it all wrong. The jet hooked, skidded, whipped, and plopped as though the ocean was the intended destination.

Ensign Shellings suffered insomnia for years after the accident. The clock face would speak slowly, sometimes over days. How intently he watched: 1215, 1500, 0315, 0445, 0930, 1745, longer, longer, longer. The hour and minute hands spelled endless and unknown words, never seeming to answer Shellings' questions: of flags, of boys, of stink, of semaphore.