“Nope. No way. Can’t be done.”
The group of us gathered in Jeff’s room was highly skeptical.
“Bullshit!” Jeff shot back. “Yes, it can. I can totally get him to say it.”
The gauntlet had thus been thrown down.
Jeff was going to somehow dupe our Naval Academy company officer into saying “David Hasselhoff.”
Publicly. With witnesses present.
“You’ll see,” Jeff said. “Just watch me.”
It was a tremendous challenge.
Company officers at the Academy ranged from den mothers to prison wardens.
Ours, The Lieutenant, was, shall we say, a bit uptight.
He was far more interested in the minutiae of Academy regulations than he was in anything relating to popular culture, like Bay Watch.
Hasselhoff was an object of fascination for those of us in Fifth Company. We considered him both a legend and a buffoon.
I mean, Knight Rider . . . come on. You couldn’t deny that.
Or all that running around in swim trunks with Pamela Anderson? And that chest hair?
Fantastic.
But, then, there was that song.
Hasselhoff’s “Looking for Freedom” had somehow become the anthem of Communism’s demise in Eastern Europe.
It was awful. And embarrassing.
Or glorious, if you were a German.
Why did they take him so seriously over there?
Anyway.
I don’t remember how the idea of The Lieutenant’s saying David Hasselhoff had originated.
But there was wide agreement that anyone capable of managing such a feat would have achieved something truly epic.
And if anyone could pull it off, it was Jeff.
He was hyper-smart with a complete inability to take anyone in a position of authority seriously.
Lieutenant Tom Keefer’s observation in The Caine Mutiny came to mind when one thought of Jeff.
“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.”
I was one of the idiots. And I was okay with that.
Jeff was one of the geniuses.
So when he said he could pull it off, you at least had to consider the possibility.
A few weeks went by, and the matter was forgotten.
At least, we thought it was.
Then, one day, after lunch, all of us Fifth Company sophomores--Midshipmen Third Class--were directed to report to the company wardroom.
The wardroom was a shared space for upperclassmen with theater-style seating.
You went there to attend training lectures during the day and to watch Seinfeld and Friends at night.
We were mulling around when a loud, “Attention on deck!” announced The Lieutenant’s arrival.
He strode to the front of the room and told us to take our seats.
There was some new regulation to be announced. Again.
The Academy was still recovering from the scandal surrounding the theft of an electrical engineering exam and the subsequent cheating perpetrated by numerous midshipmen.
The Superintendent had been fired, and one of the Academy’s previous Superintendents, then a Four-Star Admiral, had been brought back to clean up the place.
And we midshipmen had watched our freedom steadily erode as a result.
This new regulation had something to do with civilian clothes.
Whereas sophomores were previously allowed to wear civvies out in town on weekends, the new regulation stipulated that Midshipmen Third Class would only be permitted to be out of uniform on certain weekends and outside city limits.
It was bullshit, as were most things at the Academy.
The Lieutenant delighted in such things. He read the regulation verbatim and then took his time to explain the various penalties associated with violating it.
“Any questions?” he asked when he’d finished.
Jeff’s hand shot up.
“Well, sir, let’s just say, hypothetically . . .” he began.
Come on, Jeff, we all thought. Don’t drag this out. We just want to get the hell out of here.
“Let’s just say,” he went on, “that Midshipman Third Class . . . I don’t know, let’s call him . . .”
He threw his arms up at his sides and looked around the room, as if searching for the right name.
“Let’s call him ‘Midshipman Third Class David Hasselhoff.’ Let’s say his sponsors live in town, and he’s just hanging out at their house for the weekend. Would Midshipman Hasselhoff get in trouble for wearing civvies then?”
Sponsor families were those that volunteered to host midshipmen on weekends to give them a respite from the Academy.
At first, we thought Jeff was just being a pain in the ass, trying to exploit a gray area in the regulation.
Then it dawned on us.
He was going for it.
He had just baited The Lieutenant.
We all shot sideways glances at each other, careful not to betray Jeff’s incredible stunt.
And then we waited.
And waited.
Finally, The Lieutenant replied, “Well, if he’d read and understood the regulation, Midshipman Third Class David Hasselhoff would already know the answer: No, he cannot be in civvies anywhere within city limits. That includes his sponsors’ house.”
“Oh, okay,” Jeff replied. “Understood, sir.”
It took a second to sink in.
We sat there, stunned.
Ho. Ly. Shit.
By God, he’d done it.
We all struggled to keep straight faces.
“Any more questions?” The Lieutenant asked.
Nope.
“Have a nice weekend,” he said. “Dismissed.”
Outside the wardroom, it was chaos.
Guys were trying to lift Jeff into the air, like Notre Dame football players hoisting Rudy on their shoulders to parade him off the field under the approving gaze of Touchdown Jesus.
The U.S. Naval Academy is a special place.
A place of high achievement.
And through all the years I’ve been associated with it,
No other achievement stands higher.
Well done, Jeff.
David Hasselhoff would be proud.
I know I sure as hell am.