thedrifter
01-24-06, 05:21 PM
01.23.2006
A Tradition of Safety
SFTT
Matthew Dodd
One of the things I enjoyed most about being a Marine was being a part of an organization that was deep in history and steeped in traditions.
The history of a military organization is formal, factual, and well-documented in many official and un-official sources. Traditions, to a certain extent, are usually also well-documented, but unlike military histories, my experiences as a retired Marine officer showed me that Marine traditions were often informal mixtures of facts and fiction, myths and sea-stories, passed down from one generation of Marines to another. Marines love their traditions, so most of them are documented and well-known to most Marines.
Probably the most universally known Marine tradition is the annual celebrations in honor of the birth date of the Corps on 10 November. Less well-known, but probably very warmly remembered by those Marines who have experienced it, especially those who had been around before the modern electronic age of computer workstations, is the Navy Safety Center's weekly Summary of Mishaps safety message, or as it is usually called, "The Friday Funnies."
I am not sure when I was first exposed to these safety messages. However, once I read my first message, I was hooked, and I remain hooked on them to this day.
The concept of the messages is simple enough: publish actual safety-related accident vignettes to raise the overall awareness of all hands (especially the younger and less-experienced troops and officers) about the consequences of a lack of safety awareness in and around the lives of naval service members (including friends, family, and civilian workers). Pretty boring stuff, huh? I mean, who in his or her right mind could ever think that young, "bullet-proof" and "prime-of-their-lives" folks would spend any of their precious time reading about safety accidents?
Well, whoever recognized that the missing ingredient for reader interest was a healthy dose of humor deserves a medal. Combine real-world mishaps and a genuine organizational concern with the health and well-being of its members, with a biting, sarcastic sense of humor and you have the winning recipe for the "Friday Funnies."
I remember serving in a division headquarters when we still relied heavily on the printed, inches-thick, daily message read-board for our situational awareness. Those were the days when many organizations required its members to read and then initial the messages. It was sometimes someone's job to collect the message board at the end of the day and review the messages to ensure everyone had read and initialed the messages. I remember the frustrations of waiting for access to the read-board, and of watching others who were either too busy or lazy to read the messages just flip the pages and blindly initial them. I often wondered (and secretly hoped) if those "blind-initialers" would one day be given some sort of message comprehension test to expose them for what they really were.
However, my most vivid memories are of the excitement in the voices of certain gregarious individuals in my organization who would announce to anyone within ear-shot of the message-board in a way reminiscent of Paul Revere's legendary warning: "The Safety Message is here! The Safety Message is here!" That simple announcement was often all that was needed to pry individuals away from their desks and tasks to enjoy a few moments of camaraderie around the message-board to share in the tradition of reading and enjoying the safety message.
I am happy to say that the tradition of reading and enjoying the safety message is still alive today. I lost track of it during the early years of the emerging dominance of the internet and electronic revolution over the paper message-board. I re-discovered it in electronic form a few years ago and enjoyed it until I retired. Unfortunately, according to the Navy Safety Center website (www.safetycenter.navy.mil), the "Friday Funnies" archive and current editions are located on their secure site and intended for Defense Department members only.
Now that you know what the "Friday Funnies" are, and what they have meant to me over the years, let me share with you some selected safety message excerpts to give you a taste of this unofficial naval tradition. Like any good writing, the messages immediately grab the readers' attention in the words following the usual greeting: "Welcome to the latest edition of the Friday Funnies,"
"...your weekly digest of lessons learned the hard way by our shipmates so that we can learn them painlessly and almost effortlessly."
"...in which we discover that even though Navy folks have been doing something for half a century, someone can still find a way to foul it up."
"...your weekly episode of things that are just like those goofy films on "America's Funniest Videos," except nobody was laughing at the time and nobody gets a chance to earn 10,000 dollars. Some of them get a chance to pay that much to a hospital, if Uncle Sam doesn't pay it for them."
"...your weekly digest of gaffes, goofs, and other delta sierras performed by folks who wish life had a rewind feature."
"...in which we apply the weed spray of experience to another crop of persistent dumb questions."
"...your weekly chance to ride around in an imaginary ambulance and learn why another batch of folks needed splints and bandages."
"...your weekly excursion into the less-than-wonderful world of folks who have been outwitted by inanimate objects."
"...in which we continue our on-going exposition of how not to do stuff. Long-time readers are working on a master's degree in this field by now."
Next is the main body of the messages. Sometimes there is a definite theme to a message, and it is usually referred to in the greeting. Other times the only theme is people doing unsafe things in many un-related ways. Regardless, the three things all main bodies have in common are humor, real incidents, and good, old-fashioned safety common-sense advice and lessons:
"Here's what the manual said to do if you want to clean the chain on your motorcycle. Park it, put it in neutral, and turn off the engine. Rotate the rear tire by hand so you can get to all of the chain...Here's what the corporal did, one afternoon in his garage in California. He left the motorcycle in gear with the engine running and put the motorcycle on a stand. Eureka--he didn't have to rotate the rear wheel by hand, because it was spinning along by itself. However, when he tried to brush the chain, the chain grabbed the brush and in a flash, before he could enunciate the "eek" part of "eureka," it dragged his thumb into the drive sprocket, from which it emerged a mere shadow of its former self, because nearly half had been lopped off...Surgery ensued, followed by a couple weeks convalescing, and one to three months of [limited duty]. Follow the operator's manual. This will keep bystanders from having to haul out the first-aid manual."
"One Sunday afternoon, a 20-year-old [sailor] was flying a helicopter after only two days of experience. Sound risky? Well, it wasn't a real helicopter, it was a remote-controlled [RC] one. But that doesn't mean it was exactly risk-free. He was trying to hover it. Apparently, this is a tricky maneuver with toy helicopters, too. It made a bee-line for him. He tried to fend it off, like King Kong on the top of the skyscraper, but only succeeded in demonstrating that the props on an RC helo have enough torque to shatter bones. Three days in the hospital, a bone graft from his hip, perhaps more surgery, a hand that no longer works as advertised, and at least two months away from work. If I had to be involved in a helicopter mishap, this would be the kind I'd pick, but I'd rather have neither."
"With Halloween on the horizon, it's time for another visit to the Friday Funnies workshop of horrors. It is a spine-tingling venue. If Pinocchio was working there, let's just say he'd be reaching for the wood putty and caulking gun a lot...For starters, an E-6 had finished with his hand sander. He turned it (theoretically) off and lowered it onto his left leg, where it sanded off a batch of skin and inflicted a 7-stitch cut. Ten days of light duty during which to ponder whether bermuda shorts are a wise choice for the wood shop...Then there was the 18-year-old seaman who had carefully sharpened his knife while sitting in berthing. He then, naturally, wanted to see how sharp it was, and since he apparently couldn't find a piece of paper or a hunk of wood, he ran it across his right palm. It was sharp enough to slice a tendon. It was sharp enough to trigger off a medevac, surgery, 13 days off the job and eight months of light duty. Pretty sharp, huh? I mean the knife, not the seaman."
"At a San Diego country and western bar, [a sailor] imbibed a trio of beers and set his sights on the mechanical bull. His experience at this activity was, in the words of the report, "None," and after he had finished with his first effort, he had logged a grand total of eight-tenths of a second of saddle time. I'm not sure what the shortest ride to date at that bar had been, but this must have been a contender. This guy didn't even have enough time to yell "Yee-Haw!" He picked himself up from amongst the peanut shells, felt OK for a few minutes, and then the pain started. He successfully chalked it up to a sore back and went home. At 0200, he told his roommate his back was now really hurting, and that an ambulance was in order. Docs found that he had broken his pelvis. He spent 10 days in the hospital having a metal bar installed to hold his pelvis together, and another two weeks convalescing. The report noted, "Victim did not follow instructions for the activity." I'm curious what those might have been. Can you set it for "tenderfoot?"...As a Llieutenant commander who works here said, "I rode a mechanical bull once. I didn't break my pelvis, but to this day I don't know why I paid five dollars to have my privates knocked up into my stomach."
"Aboard a destroyer, an E-4 was in a powerful hurry to get on station during an [underway replenishment at sea]. He was in such a hurry that he didn't take the time to put on splash goggles. His supervisor must have been distracted because he didn't make the E-4 put them on. Still working at top speed, the Sailor removed a hose from a JP5 [jet fuel] riser and, surprise surprise, got a snootful of fuel."
The messages close with something like: "That's all for this week," followed by some parting and summarizing comments from the editor:
"...friends and neighbors. Y'know, it has often been observed, and rightly so, that we rarely have time to do something right, but we always have time to do it over. The E-4 in the paragraph above, once he sampled the latest from Chateau Exxon, had plenty of time to visit an eyewash station, go to medical, miss a week of work, and attend remedial [personal protective equipment] training."
"...until next time, if you want to find out if your mower blades are still spinning, there has to be a better way than squirting a half-pint of your blood on them, doncha think? And if you are unable to verify, from the manual or experience, that the blades take x number of minutes to stop once you kill the engine, then for goodness sake use a stick when examining a clogged chute, and wear some eye protection whilst you probe, in case a piece of stick comes shooting back at you. If you want to give blood, call the Red Cross. They have comfy chairs and will give you a cookie afterward."
"...until next time, in case you are wondering whether you know enough about poisonous snakes, the answer is 'NO.'"
From my perspective, the message editor does a masterful job using humor to make such a serious and such a regularly boring topic as safety (unless you are the one involved in suffering the consequences of unsafe acts) something that can be read by many in the hopes that the safety lessons may just stick with even one reader and help prevent a similar tragedy.
I wonder how many lives have been saved and how many injuries have been avoided over the years as a result of these messages. I know that I have learned and re-learned many safety lessons from reading these messages, and I am convinced that somehow the editor must have used hidden camera footage of me as inspiration for some of his vignettes.
Bravo Zulu to the editor and all the folks who continue to contribute to the "Friday Funnies" tradition for a very important job well done!
Matthew Dodd is a Senior Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at mattdodd1775@hotmail.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie
A Tradition of Safety
SFTT
Matthew Dodd
One of the things I enjoyed most about being a Marine was being a part of an organization that was deep in history and steeped in traditions.
The history of a military organization is formal, factual, and well-documented in many official and un-official sources. Traditions, to a certain extent, are usually also well-documented, but unlike military histories, my experiences as a retired Marine officer showed me that Marine traditions were often informal mixtures of facts and fiction, myths and sea-stories, passed down from one generation of Marines to another. Marines love their traditions, so most of them are documented and well-known to most Marines.
Probably the most universally known Marine tradition is the annual celebrations in honor of the birth date of the Corps on 10 November. Less well-known, but probably very warmly remembered by those Marines who have experienced it, especially those who had been around before the modern electronic age of computer workstations, is the Navy Safety Center's weekly Summary of Mishaps safety message, or as it is usually called, "The Friday Funnies."
I am not sure when I was first exposed to these safety messages. However, once I read my first message, I was hooked, and I remain hooked on them to this day.
The concept of the messages is simple enough: publish actual safety-related accident vignettes to raise the overall awareness of all hands (especially the younger and less-experienced troops and officers) about the consequences of a lack of safety awareness in and around the lives of naval service members (including friends, family, and civilian workers). Pretty boring stuff, huh? I mean, who in his or her right mind could ever think that young, "bullet-proof" and "prime-of-their-lives" folks would spend any of their precious time reading about safety accidents?
Well, whoever recognized that the missing ingredient for reader interest was a healthy dose of humor deserves a medal. Combine real-world mishaps and a genuine organizational concern with the health and well-being of its members, with a biting, sarcastic sense of humor and you have the winning recipe for the "Friday Funnies."
I remember serving in a division headquarters when we still relied heavily on the printed, inches-thick, daily message read-board for our situational awareness. Those were the days when many organizations required its members to read and then initial the messages. It was sometimes someone's job to collect the message board at the end of the day and review the messages to ensure everyone had read and initialed the messages. I remember the frustrations of waiting for access to the read-board, and of watching others who were either too busy or lazy to read the messages just flip the pages and blindly initial them. I often wondered (and secretly hoped) if those "blind-initialers" would one day be given some sort of message comprehension test to expose them for what they really were.
However, my most vivid memories are of the excitement in the voices of certain gregarious individuals in my organization who would announce to anyone within ear-shot of the message-board in a way reminiscent of Paul Revere's legendary warning: "The Safety Message is here! The Safety Message is here!" That simple announcement was often all that was needed to pry individuals away from their desks and tasks to enjoy a few moments of camaraderie around the message-board to share in the tradition of reading and enjoying the safety message.
I am happy to say that the tradition of reading and enjoying the safety message is still alive today. I lost track of it during the early years of the emerging dominance of the internet and electronic revolution over the paper message-board. I re-discovered it in electronic form a few years ago and enjoyed it until I retired. Unfortunately, according to the Navy Safety Center website (www.safetycenter.navy.mil), the "Friday Funnies" archive and current editions are located on their secure site and intended for Defense Department members only.
Now that you know what the "Friday Funnies" are, and what they have meant to me over the years, let me share with you some selected safety message excerpts to give you a taste of this unofficial naval tradition. Like any good writing, the messages immediately grab the readers' attention in the words following the usual greeting: "Welcome to the latest edition of the Friday Funnies,"
"...your weekly digest of lessons learned the hard way by our shipmates so that we can learn them painlessly and almost effortlessly."
"...in which we discover that even though Navy folks have been doing something for half a century, someone can still find a way to foul it up."
"...your weekly episode of things that are just like those goofy films on "America's Funniest Videos," except nobody was laughing at the time and nobody gets a chance to earn 10,000 dollars. Some of them get a chance to pay that much to a hospital, if Uncle Sam doesn't pay it for them."
"...your weekly digest of gaffes, goofs, and other delta sierras performed by folks who wish life had a rewind feature."
"...in which we apply the weed spray of experience to another crop of persistent dumb questions."
"...your weekly chance to ride around in an imaginary ambulance and learn why another batch of folks needed splints and bandages."
"...your weekly excursion into the less-than-wonderful world of folks who have been outwitted by inanimate objects."
"...in which we continue our on-going exposition of how not to do stuff. Long-time readers are working on a master's degree in this field by now."
Next is the main body of the messages. Sometimes there is a definite theme to a message, and it is usually referred to in the greeting. Other times the only theme is people doing unsafe things in many un-related ways. Regardless, the three things all main bodies have in common are humor, real incidents, and good, old-fashioned safety common-sense advice and lessons:
"Here's what the manual said to do if you want to clean the chain on your motorcycle. Park it, put it in neutral, and turn off the engine. Rotate the rear tire by hand so you can get to all of the chain...Here's what the corporal did, one afternoon in his garage in California. He left the motorcycle in gear with the engine running and put the motorcycle on a stand. Eureka--he didn't have to rotate the rear wheel by hand, because it was spinning along by itself. However, when he tried to brush the chain, the chain grabbed the brush and in a flash, before he could enunciate the "eek" part of "eureka," it dragged his thumb into the drive sprocket, from which it emerged a mere shadow of its former self, because nearly half had been lopped off...Surgery ensued, followed by a couple weeks convalescing, and one to three months of [limited duty]. Follow the operator's manual. This will keep bystanders from having to haul out the first-aid manual."
"One Sunday afternoon, a 20-year-old [sailor] was flying a helicopter after only two days of experience. Sound risky? Well, it wasn't a real helicopter, it was a remote-controlled [RC] one. But that doesn't mean it was exactly risk-free. He was trying to hover it. Apparently, this is a tricky maneuver with toy helicopters, too. It made a bee-line for him. He tried to fend it off, like King Kong on the top of the skyscraper, but only succeeded in demonstrating that the props on an RC helo have enough torque to shatter bones. Three days in the hospital, a bone graft from his hip, perhaps more surgery, a hand that no longer works as advertised, and at least two months away from work. If I had to be involved in a helicopter mishap, this would be the kind I'd pick, but I'd rather have neither."
"With Halloween on the horizon, it's time for another visit to the Friday Funnies workshop of horrors. It is a spine-tingling venue. If Pinocchio was working there, let's just say he'd be reaching for the wood putty and caulking gun a lot...For starters, an E-6 had finished with his hand sander. He turned it (theoretically) off and lowered it onto his left leg, where it sanded off a batch of skin and inflicted a 7-stitch cut. Ten days of light duty during which to ponder whether bermuda shorts are a wise choice for the wood shop...Then there was the 18-year-old seaman who had carefully sharpened his knife while sitting in berthing. He then, naturally, wanted to see how sharp it was, and since he apparently couldn't find a piece of paper or a hunk of wood, he ran it across his right palm. It was sharp enough to slice a tendon. It was sharp enough to trigger off a medevac, surgery, 13 days off the job and eight months of light duty. Pretty sharp, huh? I mean the knife, not the seaman."
"At a San Diego country and western bar, [a sailor] imbibed a trio of beers and set his sights on the mechanical bull. His experience at this activity was, in the words of the report, "None," and after he had finished with his first effort, he had logged a grand total of eight-tenths of a second of saddle time. I'm not sure what the shortest ride to date at that bar had been, but this must have been a contender. This guy didn't even have enough time to yell "Yee-Haw!" He picked himself up from amongst the peanut shells, felt OK for a few minutes, and then the pain started. He successfully chalked it up to a sore back and went home. At 0200, he told his roommate his back was now really hurting, and that an ambulance was in order. Docs found that he had broken his pelvis. He spent 10 days in the hospital having a metal bar installed to hold his pelvis together, and another two weeks convalescing. The report noted, "Victim did not follow instructions for the activity." I'm curious what those might have been. Can you set it for "tenderfoot?"...As a Llieutenant commander who works here said, "I rode a mechanical bull once. I didn't break my pelvis, but to this day I don't know why I paid five dollars to have my privates knocked up into my stomach."
"Aboard a destroyer, an E-4 was in a powerful hurry to get on station during an [underway replenishment at sea]. He was in such a hurry that he didn't take the time to put on splash goggles. His supervisor must have been distracted because he didn't make the E-4 put them on. Still working at top speed, the Sailor removed a hose from a JP5 [jet fuel] riser and, surprise surprise, got a snootful of fuel."
The messages close with something like: "That's all for this week," followed by some parting and summarizing comments from the editor:
"...friends and neighbors. Y'know, it has often been observed, and rightly so, that we rarely have time to do something right, but we always have time to do it over. The E-4 in the paragraph above, once he sampled the latest from Chateau Exxon, had plenty of time to visit an eyewash station, go to medical, miss a week of work, and attend remedial [personal protective equipment] training."
"...until next time, if you want to find out if your mower blades are still spinning, there has to be a better way than squirting a half-pint of your blood on them, doncha think? And if you are unable to verify, from the manual or experience, that the blades take x number of minutes to stop once you kill the engine, then for goodness sake use a stick when examining a clogged chute, and wear some eye protection whilst you probe, in case a piece of stick comes shooting back at you. If you want to give blood, call the Red Cross. They have comfy chairs and will give you a cookie afterward."
"...until next time, in case you are wondering whether you know enough about poisonous snakes, the answer is 'NO.'"
From my perspective, the message editor does a masterful job using humor to make such a serious and such a regularly boring topic as safety (unless you are the one involved in suffering the consequences of unsafe acts) something that can be read by many in the hopes that the safety lessons may just stick with even one reader and help prevent a similar tragedy.
I wonder how many lives have been saved and how many injuries have been avoided over the years as a result of these messages. I know that I have learned and re-learned many safety lessons from reading these messages, and I am convinced that somehow the editor must have used hidden camera footage of me as inspiration for some of his vignettes.
Bravo Zulu to the editor and all the folks who continue to contribute to the "Friday Funnies" tradition for a very important job well done!
Matthew Dodd is a Senior Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at mattdodd1775@hotmail.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie