The Kool-Aid Man Story

This week’s Sea Story Sunday is really more of a prank than a story, but it’s a funny one.

For those of you who’ve never been on a smallboy, a DDG only has one set of vending machines. Usually, this consists of one or two soda machines selling either Coca-Cola or Pepsi products and a snack machine. The snack machine is of the usual variety, with a big glass window and those metal rings that push snacks to the front that get stuck more often than not.

Now let’s talk about mounting. These machines are bolted to the deck to be secure for sea. They’ll shake only just slightly on impact for those forlorn sailors whose chili-cheese Fritos got caught in the rings of doom. Ordinarily, however, you’re just running full-bore into a shock-mounted snack machine for nothing more than frustration.

Enter a particular petty officer on USS Lastship. He noticed one of our noble helo detachment sailors cursing under his breath as his promised packet of gummy worms hung lifelessly on the edge of glory, taunting him from its position of power.

“No,” said the passing petty officer. “This cannot stand. Will not stand.”

So he charged, shoulder-first, into the vending machine. Now, this machine was no stranger to being struck by charging sailors. There was a well-worn dent where people had bumped the machine, sometimes to be met with success, other times to be met with scowls by the LSs running the ship’s stores (that’s SKs to you old-timers).

Knowing that his chances of successfully striking the machine on the side to free said gummy bears were minimal, he went straight into the glass.

Guess what? Those fucking gummy bears weren’t stuck anymore. Nor were any other snack inside that machine. As the glass came crashing down, he made available every single bag of Lays, sleeve of Oreo cookies, and packet of trail mix inside that sucker. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a 1500% success rate to me. That should make it onto a chief’s package.

Of course, the LSs were immediately notified, they collected all the snacks and stowed them away, then closed down the machine. Honor, courage, commitment.

I only found the machine later on, when I went in for a late-night bag of Doritos to discover that there was no glass on the front of the machine, and a sign that said “Out of Order.” Going down to watch, I got the low-down on what had transpired earlier that day, and immediately got an idea.

For some reason on that particular deployment, a big care package item were packets of Kool-Aid. I gathered up every unused one (read: all of them). Mustering every inch of my god-given talent for Microsoft Paint (being great at Microsoft Paint, I’ve read, is like being a world-class kazoo player), I inserted the offending petty officer’s face onto the Kool-Aid Man’s body, bursting through a brick wall a la the 1990’s commercial, below the words “Out of Order due to Kool-Aid.”

I replaced the sign on the vending machine, then filled it with packets of Kool-Aid, all for free of course.

I walked past him the next day, and he was just staring at the sign and the remaining packets of Kool-Aid. He looked at me with a grumpy look on his face (he still wasn’t sure if he was going to get in trouble for breaking the machine) and asked “Did you do this?”

I shook my head disingenuously, appalled that he could ever ask such a question of a loyal friend.

That sign remained on that machine until the day it was repaired, which was roughly three weeks later. The Captain, XO, and CMC all saw it. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard they thought it was hilarious. All I know is they let it ride, which I suppose is as good of an indication as any.

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