I was standing in line at a cafeteria in Myrtle Beach when I overheard a woman talking about her son getting charged with drag racing. That’s a pretty serious offense.

As she went on telling the story to a friend in line with her, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to ask.

"Was that here in Myrtle Beach, ma’am?" I asked.

"Oh, no," said the woman, "it was on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean."

"Holy cow!" I responded, "on a carrier deck?"

"Yessir," said the woman. "My son is stationed aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. They were sent over there to support the war effort." Then she went on to explain what happened:

Eric is 19. He’s part of the deck gang on the Big E. These boys—most of them are still teenagers—use ATVs (all terrain vehicles) to tow the Tomcats and the F-16s to the flight line. The flight crewmen calls the ATVs ‘mules.’

On this particular day, the flight deck was pretty quiet, so some of the kids started drag racing with the mules. Unfortunately, the master-at-arms saw them and two of them got charged with drag racing. "Eric said he’ll go to Captain’s Mass to answer the charges," she said.

"I’m sorry to hear that," I said, in an attempt to console the woman.

"That’s okay," she said, "at least he wasn’t hurt. Last year a boy on another carrier was racing around the flight deck after dark on one of those mule things. He drove off the edge of the deck and they never saw him again. That’s like dropping 19 stories down into the ocean—and so close to the ship’s propellers."

At that point it was our turn to order lunch. Somehow, my appetite wasn’t what it was when I first got in line.