Phonetic Friday

When I was training officer candidates, one of my favorite days was Phonetic Alphabet Friday.  During the first two weeks of training the OCs, as they were called, had knowledge they were responsible for on that particular day.  Our job as staff was to ensure they learned it.  Any time they were in formation outside and not moving, we would walk from person to person drilling them on that day’s knowledge.  And Heaven help the person that didn’t know it. 

So, on Friday of the first week of training, the OCs were responsible for knowing the phonetic alphabet.  For those of you who may not know, the phonetic alphabet is where you use a word to represent a letter.  For example, is someone told you to spell cat using the phonetic alphabet, you would spell it Charlie, Alpha, Tango.  Well, with a name like Kallstrom, I lived for Phonetic Friday.  My favorite thing was to go from person to person asking them to spell my name using the phonetic alphabet.  Listening to a trainee butcher both my name and the phonetic alphabet was priceless.  And it gave me a good reason to get my yell on.  There are two particular instances that stand out the most.

Tired and cranky at the end of a brutal week, I rolled in hot on an unsuspecting OC and gave him my standard line, “Spell my name using the phonetic alphabet.”  Crickets.  Not a word.  So I told him again, in a much louder voice, “Spell my name using the phonetic alphabet!”  Again, no response.  I started coming unglued.  The staff is not to be ignored under any circumstances and I vociferously reminded him of this.  Finally, the kid says “Sir, OC Jones reports to make a statement.”  “What?!” I replied.  After a slight hesitation, the trainee broke out, “Sir, I know the phonetic alphabet but I have no idea who you are.”  The rest of the staff had to turn around and walk away because they started laughing so hard.  I never lived it down and that poor kid will never forget my name again.

 The other instance happened outside the dining facility.  One of the flights was waiting to go in so I decided to start asking them to spell my name.  It started out much like the story above.  I kept asking this trainee to spell my name and he kept not saying anything.  Finally, I asked him if he knew who I was.  He still looked confused. “Come on!  You are really starting to hurt my feelings,” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.  At the time there were only two majors on staff and the other one was black and a former all-state football player.  It wasn’t like we were easily confused.  So I started in again.  “What’s my name?!” I asked for the last time.  The OC took a deep breath and said, “Sir, it’s Major…Kasselhoff.”  “Kasselhoff?” I replied incredulously.  “That’s right,” I continued in my best sarcastic voice. “I was on Baywatch, the number one show in the world, and I gave it all up to come train people like you.”  Then, as I started to walk away, I turned and said, “But don’t worry, I’m still huge in Germany.”

Coincidently, it was shortly after this incident that we were instructed not to use sarcasm as a training tool.  Evidently, it’s not very effective.  I’m not so sure.  To this day, if Hasselhoff makes the news for some type of buffoonery, I have random students from that class email and ask me if I’m okay.  I would say the sarcasm worked.