I Had a Flushmate

Squadron Officer School (or SOS) was, in 1990 when I attended, a seven-week course for Air Force captains. It was mostly about leadership, but we also honed our writing and public speaking skills. There were 18 officers in our flight plus our flight commander who was a member of the school faculty.

We came to SOS from our duty stations all over the world; I was stationed in Hawaii at the time. The members of the flight were serving in all kinds of military specialties including pilots, navigators, missile launch officers, aircraft maintenance officers, communications and computer systems officers, engineers, and some others that I can't remember.

We were housed in dormitories, and unlike Officer Training School, we didn't have to share our rooms with a roommate. We did, however, have to share our bathrooms. Each pair of rooms had a bathroom in between, and there was a door into the bathroom from each room.

"Flushmate" was the term applied to the person on the other side of the bathroom. Most flushmates were in the same flight, but the one female in our flight and the odd male had flushmates from another flight.

The guy who had a flushmate from another flight was an F-4 pilot, and he had a million stories. One morning before class started he was regaling us with a story about the peculiar habits of his flushie. It seems the flushie liked to give himself vocal encouragement while "using the facilities" in the morning. He was apparently not shy about it because our guy could hear him clearly through the door. It went something like this: "Alright, you can do it!" followed by some grunting, and then self-congratulations such as, "Good one!"

We thought the story was hilarious already, but we were laid out when he told us his nickname for his flushmate: "Coach."