Anyway, more important to me, it was also Military Appreciation Night.
Essentially, what that entailed was this: a half hearted swearing in ceremony (our second now, though this time we had the Army and Air Force along) and a parachute jump from USSOCOM. While we did have an Air Force Major General conducting the swearing in (Operations director or something of CENTCOM), I say it was half-hearted because, while that was going on, the SOCOM jumpers were doing their thing.
Guess where the crowd's attention was focused.
At any rate, after that we got to watch the game. Me, and a majority of my fourth class shipmates decided to stay in our Whites for this (summer, not chokers). So, as we noticed all the drunken college kids while it was still the first quarter, a girl, obviously well into her drinks, came up to us a few times, and we got some odd conversations with her (at one point, for reasons I'm still unsure of, she told us to "go back to our country" or something like that. She must've thought we were the British or something
). Then, later, she came back wanting one of our covers to take back and show to her friends that she could get one. We, naturally, did not want to do this, parting with our covers, for a few reasons. One, we weren't sure we'd get them back, and two, some of the officers, and more importantly, the Gunny, were around, and one never knew when they might show up. One of our wittier members, however, gave the reply that there was a sniper who would shoot us if we took the covers off. 
So, when she couldn't get us to part with our covers, she decided she would instead get us to part with one of our own. That brave, couragous Midshipman, willing to take a sacrifice for the sake of his shipmates, and be dragged off by the drunk lady, was none other than... me.
So, she led me by the hand, up to where her friends were. Then, after some "introductions" were made, she put on my cover, got up and hugged me fairly closely, and we had our picture taken. I then got my cover back, and she kissed my hand three times, saluted me (in a civilian manner) twice, and thanked me in between for awhile. Then, as I was about to take my leave, she went and grabbed for my belt buckle, as a joke I guess, because it wasn't really much of an attempt.
The whole thing wouldn't have been so bad (it actually wasn't, really), and might've been somewhat more pleasent (it was all right I suppose), and I a bit more flattered, if she weren't rather obviously drunk.
While this was happening, who would be two rows up but... a group of people I knew from high school. They got to watch the fun. So I went up, chatted with them, then returned to my shipmates. After much congratulations, of course, I got to make my little joke ("Did I miss a button?"
), and we got to sit down and enjoy the rest of the game.There were also other instances of people just walking up to us, sitting down next us, and chatting with us, for no other reason than we were in uniform at the time.
All in all, it was a good time. And now I wonder what that poor girl is going to be thinking today after she got up and had the tale relayed to her...and especially when/if she sees those pictures. And since we all had our nametags on, her friends (assuming she herself won't remember), at least, have a fairly good idea of who the Midshipman was that accompinied her up there was.
But, again, it was fun, and I enjoyed it. The whole experience was good for some laughs, and being dragged off by a drunk woman wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. And she was, in fact, pretty nice, too, and I bet it'd be nice to have met her under more "sober" conditions.
