I was not required to take any kind of Social Studies course during my sophomore year of high school, so I didn't. Honestly, since we were only able to take just six classes a day, it sort of limited our choices since we were allowed to take a certain number of activity classes in order to graduate.
Social Studies was probably my second least favorite subject, after science. I didn't have a real problem with learning history. It was learning about each individual country that got on my nerves. That was why I skipped World History, which was offered my sophomore year.
So I was glad to have American History for my junior year. At the beginning of the year, the teacher said that the new textbooks were set up differently. Because there was so much trouble getting to the more recent events in American History, the book was designed to give a sort of Cliff's Notes version of the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. That would allow us to spend more time on things like World War I, World War II and Vietnam. (Yes, it seems like all we did in History was talk about wars. Peacetime was just too boring.)
The funny thing is that even with us rushing through the first 100 years of American History in the first 9 weeks of the school year, we still could not get past World War II. I think that format gave the teacher the idea that he could teach the rest of the material in a more relaxed manner. He probably got too relaxed.
One of the things the teacher did during the year was tell us this tale of when he was in the Navy. He took a full hour to tell this story. Dont' worry, it's not scary, like the story my sixth grade music teacher told.
It went like this: He was serving on board the SS Patch. (I can't believe I remember the name of that ship after all this time.) Before he was in the Navy, that particular ship had been sunk twice, raised and salvaged. There were more than 300 people serving on the ship. One night, the dinner was beanie weinies. Everybody enjoyed the dinner. Before everyone went to bed, there was an announcement that the ship was about to head into a really rough storm and advised everyone to strap themselves in their bunks.
They weren't kidding about that announcement. The ocean tossed the ship back and forth. A lot of the crewmembers started feeling nauseous. At one point, the nose of the ship stuck straight up in the air, like the Titanic before it sunk. After a few wave crashes, he could hear somebody throwing up. Then another, then another. Then he started vomiting. He believed he had a good idea. He thought that if he went into the shower, he would feel a lot better. However, there were a lot of other sailors who had that same "good idea." Everyone was in the shower. Unfortunately, they were still all in the process of vomiting. The entire shower floor was covered in several inches of regurgitated beanie weanies. They clogged the drains. The teacher said that if he used his foot to clear the drain, it would make this sucking noise and get clogged again with beanie weanies.
Fortunately, the ship did not sink. But ever since then, the teacher could never eat beanie weanies again.
This was what I learned in American History my junior year.
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