CHAPTER 6. VIGNETTES (Cont'd)

Again, I will post 2 short stories of humorous events that took place in my life.  The first is part of the very first date that I had with my future wife, Sylvia.  She has told me numerous times that she can't understand why she went out with me a second time after what happened in my story entitled "Snowing In the Sprite."  The second story is one of my daughter Stephanie's favorites, entitled "The Joker."

SNOWING IN THE SPRITE (1964).  In the winter of 1964, I met my future wife, Sylvia Stone.  She had just moved into an apartment on the floor above me.  The first time we met, she knocked on my door and just walked into my apartment.  She was surprised to see me, because she had expected to see my roommate whom she had met earlier.  She wanted to borrow something.  She was a little embarrassed, plus, she had her hair in curlers and generally looked a mess.  She apologized and made a hasty retreat.  We really met a few days later in the laundry room of the apartment complex.  We both wanted to use the dryer, so I suggested that we dry our clothes together and save money.  I like to say that we washed our underwear together, because I found some of hers mixed in with my clothes later on.
A few days later, some of the NAVOCEANO guys were having a little party, and we needed some girls to be there.  In the mornings, Sylvia would wait in the foyer for her ride to work.  I went down to the door and asked her and her roommate, Billi Jo, who was with her, if they would like to go.  They both said yes.  So, it wasn’t a date since I had asked both of them.  In fact, Sylvia drove to the party with two other guys.
That night, after the party, Sylvia and Billi Jo went back to the apartment with me.  We all piled into my Austin Healy Sprite.  Billi Jo sat in the passenger’s seat and Sylvia was between us on the car’s drive shaft hump.  The Sprite is a 2-person roadster.  She was not too comfortable.  And, as luck would have it, snow began to fall.  Soon, it was snowing in the cockpit of the car.  Sylvia said, “What kind of a car do you have here?”  I was a little embarrassed, and I tried to explain as she was being blanketed with snow.
A few weeks before the party, I returned from a trip to Bermuda and discovered that the convertible top to the Sprite had been slashed by vandals.  I located a business that replaced convertible tops, and I had the top replaced.  The original top had a rubber gasket along the part that attached to the top of the windshield.  They did not replace this gasket.  The snow was riding up the windshield and through the space where the gasket should have been.  Hence, it was snowing in my car.  Again I had not started off well in establishing a relationship with a girl.
When I tell this story and Sylvia is listening, she always adds that she doesn’t know why she married me.  She thought that I was a klutz with a crazy car, and she always seems to add that she thought I was a cheapskate because I asked her to pay for her share for use of the clothes dryer when we dried our clothes together.  She maintains that it was only one little piece of underwear that got caught up in my clothes.  That is not what I remember.

THE JOKER (1982).  I had not planned to include this story and had not included it in my original outline.  But my daughter, Stephanie, insisted that I do.  She said that what happened to me here was one of the funniest memories of our 2 years in Hawaii.  So, here it is.
It was 1982, and I was fairly new at my position as Environmental Advisor to ADM Kauderer.  Since I was flying on military helicopters, I was required to take survival training in event of a crash at sea.  To fulfill this requirement, I was bussed, along with about 15 military guys, to a rather large swimming pool at a seemingly abandoned base in the mountains of Oahu.  We drove through the unmanned security gate, and when we did, the smell of chlorine was strong.  When we gathered around the swimming pool, we were told that all the in-water tests had to be done wearing our full suite of flight gear.  This included the flight suit, helmet, gloves, and, boots.  I felt like, you’ve got to be kidding.  Also, I realized that the strong odor of chlorine that I noticed earlier was from the pool.  It reeked of chlorine.  We were pushed into the pool and told to swim 2 laps to warm up.  When I finished the laps, I was already exhausted because of all the extra weight I was wearing.  However, I was not allowed to touch the side of the pool.  I was instructed on how to use my helmet as a “flotation device”.  I used more energy trying to use my helmet than I would have doing the dead man’s float.  They ran us through a bunch of simulated drills, one of which almost killed me.  The helicopter had crashed, and burning oil was blazing on top of the water.  We had to swim about 3 strokes underwater, come up to just below the surface, use our hands to splash the water (and hopefully clear the surface of the burning oil), break the surface, take a deep breath, go back under, and repeat the process for the entire length of the pool.  I knew that I was going to drown.  What kept me going was that several of the young stud military kids had already asked for help and asked to get out of the pool.  I don’t know how I did it, but I survived.  We were finally allowed to get out of the pool and get dressed.
I had a scheduled appointment with the admiral later that afternoon, and the instructors knew about this.  They had promised that they would get me back to the base in time for my meeting.  However, we were getting short of time, and we had to hurry to get dressed for the bus ride back.
When I entered the admiral’s waiting room, I noticed that everyone was looking at me very strangely.  No one said a word to me.  When the admiral was ready for me, I was asked in.  I noticed that he looked at me and had a little grin on his face.  When our meeting was over, he shook my hand and shook his head.
As I was leaving the outer room, the yeoman (secretary) said, “Dr. Tooma, can I ask you a question”?  I said, “Sure, go ahead”.  He asked, “Are you in a play or something”?  I said, “No. Why”?  He said, “Your hair is a bright green”.  I said, “What”!  I ran into the bathroom to look in a mirror.  To my horror, my white hair was now a neon green.  I looked like the Joker in a campy Batman movie. No wonder the admiral was shaking his head.  I was so embarrassed.
When I got home, Sylvia and the kids looked at me and laughed uncontrollably.  They asked me how my hair turned so green.  I told them about the chlorine-laced pool. 
It took me several days of hair washings to get the green out.  It took several weeks before my family stopped teasing me about it.

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