An Experiment Gone Wrong

When I turned 19, I joined the Navy for practical more than patriotic reasons. America was at war in Vietnam, and I was now subject to the draft. If I enlisted, I would have a choice, and my choice was the Navy. My brother had been in the Navy and brought back wonderful color slides of the Mediterranean countries his ship visited. I hoped to follow in his wake. And if I enlisted in the reserves, I might finish in two years with money enough for college. The Mediterranean didn’t work out: my ship carried on oceanographic research along the Arctic Circle. College did. In fact, I finished a year of course work through the United States Armed Forces Institute’s correspondence program. It was not all smooth sailing though, and that is what this story is about.

One of my first courses was basic geometry, which seemed not much different from the geometry course I had taken in high school.

"What are you studying?"

It was Norman, one of the ship’s electronic technicians. That was my job too, only he maintained radio equipment and I maintained the radar. Norman knew I was studying, not just reading, because the USAFI texts all had the same blue cover and white letters.

"Geometry," I said.

"Lots of memorization," Norman said. "But I know how to buzz through it with almost no effort at all."

"I’m listening."

"Well, you learn all the rules while you are sleeping.”

"Sure!"

"No, seriously! I read an article about this movie star who tape records his lines and learns them by playing them back when he is sleeping. You could do that with your recorder."

The notion sounded reasonable enough. I had recently bought a small reel-to-reel recorder, and since it right there in my locker, Norman’s proposal made as much sense to me as him.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"What is the worst that can happen?" said Norman.

"It might not work."

"Then again, said Norman, "it might!"

I remember only a few particulars about the recorder. The magnetic tape was about a fourth-inch wide, and the reels were, at most, three inches in diameter. If I tried what Norman proposed, I could play my tape without bothering any of the sailors who slept in my quarters, because the recorder had earphones that plugged into a jack and kept the sound from coming through the speaker. There remained only one problem. The recorder did not have an automatic shutoff. How would I wake up at the end of the reel?

"I know!" said Norman. "Record your axioms, and during the next GQ [General Quarters], record the ship’s general alarm system at the end. That will wake you up for sure."

I was by then too attracted to the experiment to give much critical reflection to Norman’s GQ alarm idea. Yes, I thought, of course that would work. It might startle me, but the effect would be momentary. I would reach under my bed (I was at the bottom of three tiers of cots), take hold of the recorder, and turn it off. Simple!

So, I proceeded. I recorded what I wanted to memorize. And that afternoon, when, over the ship’s loudspeakers, the familiar call came to man our battle stations—although our ship had no guns larger than rifles—I recorded my wake-up call. It went something like this:Bong, bong, bong, bong—and then a voice: "Now, this is a drill . . . this is a drill. All hands man your battle stations!" Afterward, I played it back to Norman in the electronics workshop, and he enthusiastically endorsed it. "This thing is going to work!" he gushed. "Aren't you glad I thought of it?"

Norman urged me to conduct the experiment that very night. So, at "lights out," I plugged the earphones into the jack, fed the end of the tape into the empty reel, turned the recorder on, and slid it under the bed. I was soon fast asleep, put gently in that state no doubt by my sonorous rendition of the Pythagorean theorem.

In retrospect, I would say the experiment was working perfectly—that is, logistically speaking. But would I remember the axioms and theorems I had recorded? Would the movie actor’s bold claim be borne out? My answer came with a bang. Or should I say bong? I had turned up the volume of the GQ alarm when I recorded it, so it would not fail to have its intended effect. Moreover, to further its effectiveness, I had recorded all three repetitions of it.

BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG—"NOW, THIS IS A DRILL . . . THIS IS A DRILL. ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!" My midnight reveille could not have worked better. I instantly sat up in bed, knowing exactly what was happening. I groped for the recorder under the bed and immediately grabbed hold of it. In my rush, though, I yanked the earphone cord from its socket and the alarm came through the speaker.

I will spare you a report of the humiliation that came my way when a couple of dozen men leaping like startled gazelles from their reverie discovered the alarm was coming from my little recorder. Suffice it to say had they not been more amused than annoyed, I can imagine substantially more disagreeable repercussions than the ones that occurred.

Worse than the humiliation, though, was Norman’s feigned response, for he pretended to be as surprised and startled by the alarm as everyone else. Worse yet, in the weeks to come, he brought up the hilarity of the scene ad nauseam without ever once asking if the experiment itself had worked.

Tonight, while I was remembering this story, I went on the Internet and looked up sleep memorization. Google came up with 655,000 results. Maybe Norman didn’t wonder, but plenty of others still do.