TechIntersect

I marked this day on my calendar a year ago because I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without pause and reflection. On November 12, 1987 I entered into the realm of King Neptune, in hopes of gaining the title of “Trusty Shellback”. For those unfamiliar, a “Trusty Shellback” is one who has crossed the equator aboard ship and successfully endured the acompanying ritual hazing.

(This cartoon by my friend and shipmate Eric Thibodeau sums up what was going on at the time. Check out his fascinating website if you have some time. His career and personal development are nothing short of amazing!)

Lengths of firehose were cut and fashioned into a “shilleleigh” with which the initiators could beat on “slimy polywogs” or sailors who hadn’t yet crossed the equator. In 1987 on my ship the USS Cochrane, the old-style intiation was still administered with a few concessions such as permitting knee protection to be worn by ‘wogs as they crawled around on the deck on hands and knees, but after it was all over, my backside was sore for days! A few years later, as Thibodeau points out, the captain of the USS Missouri wisely limited the initiation to non-physical abuse.

At the time, I remember feeling cheated because I had endured much more than what we were allowed to administer on my second Equator crossing. Looking back, that was just immaturity and our captain was showing great wisdom and leadership by re-writing the rules of the game.

If you think about what was going on at the time, personal camcorders were coming into widespread use. Although these were expressly forbidden during the initiation on the Missouri, our CO A.L. Kaiss knew that anything that happened under his command could wind up on CNN.

The tradition of the “crossing the line ceremony” is an old one, and at times the hazing certainly has gotten out hand. Participation was voluntary, although it was not without peer pressure and chastizement if you elected to sit out.

Perhaps this new world of information in which we live is forcing us to treat each other better. People who behave badly are often exposed on the Internet for the bullies that they are, although some relish the attention.

Handling the Bullies

I think it is important that we help kids understand how to deal with the world’s bullies. I have learned a lot on the subject from the Love and Logic institute. It has really helped me to teach my own kids how to handle teasing.

Last summer at Wakonse, in a room full of 200 people, I cracked up the room when I quipped a quote I picked up at a Love and Logic conference. The audience had just witnessed a tense role-playing exercise involving a stressful faculty interaction including tenure, race relations, and a big bad bully. I suggested that you can disarm a bully by answering crazy talk with crazy talk. Look them straight in the eye and say:

No thanks, I just had a banana!

The room erupted because it is a silly response to a silly situation. Sally Ogden has a great video about teaching kids how to handle the bullies in this way. If only I had known this one-liner, maybe I could’ve talked my way out of the initiation twenty years ago…. Naw, probably not

Trackback URI | Comments RSS