Tuesday, February 24, 2015

He fires a question.

Today has been another day of lingering in warm spaces.  There are about two of those, and of the two, only one offers a fair amount of solitude; the second is occupied by rational crew.  All the others are still occupied by Sloth, Christopher, and  Geoffrey, the bipolar engineer.  Not much relief.

After a morning of traveling between the deck office and the wheelhouse, I finally had that moment when I was forced to walk in close proximity to Sloth, allowing him to initiate a conversation.  But rather than ask me the usual drivel of boat questions, he put an engineering question out, one that would give him the opportunity to catch me in a situation of managerial incompetence. He asked, "Why do the flood lights keep going out?"  I froze for a second, sensing the attempted entrapment.

Should I explain to him that the generators' governors weren't adjusting quickly the way they used to? Would he understand the term "marginal ballast failure?"  I wondered for a second more.  Then, "Voltage drops," I blurted out, and continued walking.  He had nothing.  It was so obvious and direct an answer that he had to think quickly for something to add.  He had nothing.  Standing there with a dumbfounded look on his face, he appeared stupider than he usually had these last few days and I smiled as I passed through the passageway and into the galley.  It was my first public smile in these last few days and in just a minute or two, my smile grew so wide that my chapped face hurt.

Sloth is going home tomorrow.  Our education is over.

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