#deckhands nightmares

[thegrumpydeckhand]

Those Awesome Anxiety Dreams...

I'm an anxious person. I get anxiety dreams, frequently. There's the "missed all semester of class, finals are in an hour" type, the "gotta pee, all the bathrooms are some kind of Echeresque nightmare of public humiliation" ones, and since I started working on boats I got a new one:

We're pulling in to the harbor, which is packed with boats, the fairway is like 5 ft wide and I have no clue where our slip is. I'm getting ready to tie up, I've got the line in my hand, but the cleat is nowhere to be seen. So I'm running around this catwalk-filled industrial monstrosity searching for the cleat while the captain yells at me. Sometimes it's on the roof of the wheelhouse, sometimes it's inside a maze of bulkheads, sometimes I can't find it.

Preferable to the school dreams though, at least they're relevant. Feels a little silly to be dreaming about high school when I'm in my 30s.

[thegrumpydeckhand]

Our boat is tied up at a mooring ball these days and someone has been sneaking aboard at night and taking a shit on the deck.

What. The. Fuck.

[thegrumpydeckhand]

The naturalist told you when you got on the boat: stay outside the cabin if you start feeling sick. *I* told you when I came around to show you how to put a life jacket on: if you start feeling sick, leave the cabin. When you started looking uncomfortable, I politely suggested you might feel better in the fresh air. When you turned green, I urged you to go to the back of the boat, outside. Now that you are vomiting all over yourself, I'm trying to appear sympathetic, but you're giving me this confused puppy look like "how did this happen?!" and all I can think is that your being a stubborn dumbass is going to cost me half an hour of scrubbing tonight. Bonus addendum: after I finally drag your puking carcass out onto the stern, you smile and tell me how much better you suddenly feel.