new US sailor uniform

[Oligaitur]

A few years ago, the US Navy retired an old sailor's uniform that had 13 buttons on the pants. (Like the Royal Navy, the American Navy is *obsessed* with tradition, so the new uniform has the same 13 buttons but they're decorative; there's just a hidden zipper behind them now.) It wasn't their most formal uniform, but you had to wear it if you went "on liberty" -- time out in public away from your base or ship.

Back in the day, a bunch of sailors would go out on liberty and get crazy drunk to blow off steam. The problem was you didn't feel like undoing all those buttons every hour to take a piss. But if you waited too long, you and your buddies are standing over a urinal trough frantically trying to undo 13 buttons before you started pissing. Guys joke about the thrill of needing a wicked piss while you unbutton your uniform. But if a grown man in the US Navy pisses himself in uniform, he never lives it down. And there's a formal discipline record if his commanding officer catches him sneaking into barracks with soiled clothes. Nothing could be more humiliating.

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[Fred]

"Guys joke about the thrill of needing a wicked piss while you unbutton your uniform." Some of us do experience a thrill in such circumstances.