The only thing I ever feel nostalgic about is the boat...not that I liked the boat. In fact, I hated the boat, and at the time I thought I hated everything about the boat. But the truth is, to get to the boat I had to survive what I believe to this day is the most grueling educational process on the planet. It took a lot of qualification just to get in, and still about three quarters of the students washed out. Those who survived became the people that I worked with, and literally spent all of my time with, since our "commute" involved walking a couple hundred feet. We lived together, worked together, drank together in port, and the world pretty much narrowed down to just us...which means that for years if someone just barely scraped their way in because they were of merely above average intellect we tortured them about being slow witted...because our perceptions were totally skewed.
When I got out of the navy I was astonished to find that the real world is just filled with people I could hardly believe existed. People who in retrospect make up the great average bulk of the population and to me seemed like they weren't smart enough to be kept as a houseplant, much less given a job. Sometimes I miss being able to be smart and still feel ordinary.
