I had the pleasure of serving four happy years in the U.S. Navy from April of 1965 to April of 1969. No, seriously; they were happy years. I had an opportunity to figure out who or what I was, made some very good friends whom I still think about, ran across a few weird sailors and had some great adventures! I left the Navy with great memories. What more could one wish for?

One of the most unusual or strangest individuals I ever met while serving a tour of duty aboard the USS Banner was a tall skinny sailor who looked an awful lot like a cartoon character named Gyro Gearloose. I don’t remember the guy’s name anymore and Gearloose is what I should call him because he did have a few loose gears, but I would probably be guilty of some type of copyright infringement. This fellow was really pretty ditzy, so I guess from this point forward I shall refer to him as Ditzman or just plain Ditzy. I know some say we should never judge a book by its cover, but when I first saw Ditzman, I knew right off that he must be from a place that I had never been, and did not wish to go. I don’t know if this guy was seriously a bit wacky, or if he had latched onto an ingenious way of getting an early discharge because he had barely settled in to life on a Navy ship when he started telling the rest of us what it was that made him stand out and made him different. It seems; as Ditzy would tell the story, that as a young child he had been helping his mother in the garden. Unbeknownst to his mother, while she had her back to him and was busy pulling weeds, a space ship suddenly materialized, and apparently very quietly, appeared overhead in the skies. Poor Ditzy was about to become a kidnap victim. I cannot recall if these aliens actually came down and physically abducted Ditzman or if they had some type of device that simply sucked him off from earth and into their space ship, but according to Ditzy; he was abducted and taken to a strange planet in an unknown galaxy, where he was subjected to testing with all different kinds of weird experiments performed on him.

Apparently, after several years of captivity and experimentation, the aliens released him back in the garden where his mother was still bent over and pulling weeds. “Ditzman”; I said. If you were gone for several years, your poor mother must have been devastated.” “Oh, no”, He replied, “The years I was gone was in the space aliens time frame. In earth time, I had disappeared for only a few minutes, and mom never even knew I was gone, and I never told her I had been abducted by aliens from space. I don’t think she would have liked knowing that.” I confess I was becoming impressed with his ability to fabricate such
a story. “What about the experiments”, the rest of us wondered. “Did they damage you in any way?” Ditzy looked at us like we were a bunch of dummies and said; “Well no, they never did harm me, but after I got back to earth I realized I had unusual powers that never existed before. “And what were those powers we cried out” Ditzman peered out at us through his thick glasses and simply said; “I can fly.” In spite of a chorus of snickers, bemused looks and muffled chuckles, Ditzy Ditzman continued to tell his story of alien abduction and his power of leaping several hundred feet in what would appear to be flying. All this without a cape or the letter S on his chest!

Everything came to a head one day while we were moored at the dock in Yokohama harbor. It was payday and a group of us, including Ditzman were on clean-up duty on the deck. As we received our paychecks, we either took them inside and locked the paycheck in our lockers or otherwise secured them. Not ole Ditzy Ditzman! Being smarter than the rest of us, he stuck his in the cuff of his blouse and continued to scrub the deck. At least until a gust of wind caught his paycheck and carried it out about two hundred feet from the ship where it lay floating in the water. I felt a slow grin slowly stretching across my face as I realized what had happened and saw the look of panic on Ditzman’s face, and why he came to me for sympathy and a solution I will never know. I happened to be fresh out of sympathy, didn’t have a heckuva lot of empathy, but solutions…well, I have always considered myself to be a problem solver. “What’s wrong Ditzman”, I asked as he came running up to me. “Look”, he screamed at me. “My paycheck, it’s floating out in the water. What am I going to do?” he shouted.  Speaking in a calm and reasoned voice, trying desperately to not laugh, I said, “Ditz; that should not be any problem at all for someone such as you.” “But my paycheck”, he cried, It’s out in the harbor just floating away.” “C’mon now Ditz, you have told all of us numerous times that you could either jump great distances or fly. Now you see that lily pad out there? It’s just a foot or two from your paycheck and all you have to do is jump out there, land quickly on that lily pad, grab your paycheck, then quick before you start to sink, just jump on back to the ship. You will be fine!” The look poor ole Ditzman gave me was precious and I had a feeling I was lucky Ditzie did not toss me over the side as he stormed off muttering under his breath. I don’t know about the rest of the crew, but he never again talked in my presence about his special ability to leap great distances or about the time he was abducted by space aliens. I did hear from one of my shipmates many years later that Ditzie had to go to a Captain’s mast for some reason, and during the proceedings Captain Clark asked him; “Ditzman, Is it true you can fly?” Ditzman replied; “Yes! I can fly!”

Written March 26, 2011
Author Lyn Liechty. This and other stories from Lyn’s past may be read at www.arealauction.com