kartooner

My one and only brother Matt will be head­ing into the Navy start­ing Mon­day. He will be trav­el­ing to the Chicago area for boot camp and then even­tu­ally trans­ferred to A-School for his edu­ca­tion. As far as naval ter­mi­nol­ogy is con­cerned he will learn code words (or Navy speak) for things like the bath­room (the head) and candy (geedunk).

“GEEDUNK — To most sailors the word gee­dunk means ice cream, candy, potato chips and other assorted snacks, or even the place where they can be pur­chased. No one, how­ever, knows for cer­tain where the term orig­i­nated, but there are sev­eral plau­si­ble theories:

1. In the 1920’s a comic strip char­ac­ter named Harold Teen and his friends spent a great amount of time at Pop’s candy store. The store’s owner called it The Gee­dunk for rea­sons never explained.

2. The Chi­nese word mean­ing a place of idle­ness sounds some­thing like gee dung.

3. Gee­dunk is the sound made by a vend­ing machine when it dis­penses a soft drink in a cup.

4. It may be derived from the Ger­man word tunk mean­ing to dip or sop either in gravy or cof­fee. Dunk­ing was a com­mon prac­tice in days when bread, not always obtained fresh, needed a bit of tunk­ing to soften it. The ge is a Ger­man unac­cented pre­fix denot­ing rep­e­ti­tion. In time it may have changed from getunk to gee­dunk. What­ever the­ory we use to explain geedunk’s ori­gin, it doesn’t alter the fact that Navy peo­ple are glad it all got started.”

(source: www.sgaus.org/hist_fac.htm)

I wish the very best of luck to my brother and wanted him to know that he’s been my clos­est friend for years and will always be. Hon­estly, I couldn’t have asked for a bet­ter sib­ling if there was a Sug­ges­tion Box for it. Many years of mem­o­ries includ­ing pre­tend­ing to be the knights from Medievil Times to record­ing pup­pet shows, it’s all locked up here in the files of my memories.

I know he will enjoy his time in the Navy and have plenty of adven­tures and expe­ri­ences to share when he is relieved of his duties some­day. From those that I’ve talked to who have been a part of the mil­i­tary very few share expe­ri­ences that devi­ate from mak­ing them a bet­ter per­son. From their very first wakeup call at 3am to watch­ing the sun­rise to form­ing new friend­ships, learn­ing about them­selves and their nation the mil­i­tary is an expe­ri­ence that deserves recognition.

Good luck, I love you brother. You’re grown up to be a great per­son and I can’t wait until you come visit us.