Thirty-three suggestions for the ex-sailor who misses ‘the good old days’:

1. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight into your eyes, and mumble, "Sorry. Wrong rack".

2. Don’t eat any food which doesn’t come from out of a can or needs to have water added. Drink only Kool-Aid or powered milk with your meals.

3. Paint all of the walls inside of your house pea-green, the ceilings a dirty-white, & all of the stairways gray. Number all doors and windows and mark them "X", "Y", or "Z".

4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When you take a shower, have someone in your family shut off the water immediately after you finish soaping.

5. Repeat back everything anyone says to you.

6. Anytime that there is a thunderstorm, go sit on a wobbly rocking chair and rock back and forth as hard as you can until you become nauseous. Then continue to rock.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "High".

8. Don’t watch TV (except movies) in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.

9. Don’t do your laundry at home. Pick the most crowded laundromat which you can find & do your laundry there.

10. (Optional for ex-Engineering Types): Leave your lawnmower running in your living room six hours per day for optimal noise & exhaust levels.

11. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

12. Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.

13. Sleep with your dirty laundry.

14. Invite guests for dinner but don’t have enough food for them.

15. Once per week, blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure that the wind carries the soot across and onto your neighbor’s house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

16. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once per week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

17. Wake up every night at midnight and have, if anything, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (Option: canned ravioli or cold soup).

18. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.

19. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can. The run out into your yard and break out the garden hose.

20. Once per month take every major appliance in your house completely apart and then put them all back together again.

21. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 to 6 hours before drinking.

22. Invite at least 85 people you don’t really like to come and visit with you for a few months.

23. Store your eggs in the garage for two months and then cook & eat a dozen each morning.

24. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

25. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills on all of the doors in your house so that you either trip over each threshold or hit your head on the sill each time that you pass through.

26. Put a complicated lock on your basement door and wear the key on a lanyard around your neck at all times.

27. Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.

28. When baking cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread icing, really thick, on the lower side to level off the top.

29. Every so often, throw a cat into the swimming pool, shout, "MAN OVER BOARD... SHIP RECOVERY!", run into the kitchen and sweep all pots/pans/dishes off of the counter and onto the floor. Then yell at your wife for not having the place "stowed for sea". 

30. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don’t plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Announce, to no one in particular, "Stove manned and ready". Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Then announce, again to no one in particular, "Stove secured". Roll up the headphone cord and put the headphones away.

31. Write a controlled work package to change the oil in your car.

32. Go to a foreign restaurant where no one speaks English. Get really drunk & ask for directions to your car.

33. Spend your entire paycheck (for the month) on stupid plastic baubles (for the family) and cheap booze (for yourself) and feel the pride in knowing that you’re not totally selfish. Stay in your house for the rest of the month.