Dear Folks, This is another story brought on by my putting the kitchen in order and washing the dishes this evening while listening to classical music. My ice trays needed refilling but by that time I had let the hot water flow to where it would be hot enough to do the dishes. Nonetheless, I figured it wouldn't harm the refrigerator freezer if I filled the trays up with hot water. And that's what brought on this story. Back in the late 1970s during my Navy assignment to Navy Recruiting District Headquarters in Buffalo, as a Chief Petty Officer (Personnelman) I was transferred to the Officer Recruiting Office as Office Administrator. Which in my job required me to supervise the junior petty officers in getting out the required paperwork and reports on time and in a professional manner. As such, I got to know the officers assigned to Officer Recruiting. Note: I was considerably older than all of them. Our headquarters was located in the Federal Office building in downtown Buffalo, NY, which meant that there was no Navy chowhall or mess of any sort availabile and either you went out to eat lunch at a local restaurant or you brown-bagged it, or you ate lunch in the cafeteria in the building. I chose to have lunch in the cafeteria and so did the Officer Recruiting officers. If I saw them sitting at one of the long tables, I asked if I could join them and who knows but what if they saw me sitting alone at a table they joined me. Although during lunch we may have touched on the aggrevations all of us had to endure in such a pressured job, for the most part we steered clear of the subject and just chit-chatted. I always had the feeling that they really didn't know where I was coming from for the most part. I was very well aware that I was enlisted and they were commissioned officers and at that time enlisted and officers didn't socialize at all. Not only that but I knew that all of them had graduated from college; however, I don't know if they knew I had only a high school diploma. However, none of our conversations were particularly strained in any manner. One day over lunch Lt. Po brought up a scientific subject that apparently had recently studied. It had to do with the premise that if you put hot water into ice trays ice cubes would freeze quicker. Everyone wanted to disagree with him but he went on. His theory was that if you use hot water, the atoms in the hot water would be scurrying around so fast that to compensate for the freezing temperature of the refrigerator, the ice would form more quickly. Note: trust me, he was more scientific in his explanation at the time than what I just gave. The other officers were almost slack-jawed at such a theory but it caught my imagination. After all, I had actually (barely) passed high school Physics but I was following him all the way. From the physics point of view, it sounded plausible. I believe he was a bit surprised that I was the only one who had a clue or an open mind to at least to consider such a theory. Another day over lunch I asked Lt. Po where his ancestors came from in that I didn't have a clue what his orignal nationality might have been. He seemed pleased that I asked and told me that his ancestors were Italians who settled along the Po River in northern Italy. He continued with quite a history of the Po Valley and I was all ears. However, I don't recall if any of the officers were particularly interested at all. The bottom line to this story is that over all of my life many, many incidents have happened to let me know that even in civilian and social life there's a sharp line between those with college degrees and those who only graduated from high school. Maybe there isn't that sharp line now but do you know what? As Director of our local museum awhile back and working with volunteers with Bachelors degrees, Masters degrees and even PH.d.s, for the most part they had difficulty with their A B Cs. Trust me I don't exagerate. After all of these years I've finally come to the conclusion that the level of anyone's formal education has nothing to do with their intelligence or general knowledge of life whatsoever. vee