Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

When you cross the equator, does the water start circling the drain in the opposite direction?

Does anyone still believe that?

Silly question:  there are people on this ship who believed they would see the International Date Line.  Pretty sure there are people even now, filling their sinks with water and watching it drain out.

My primary job on the ship is to write the Deans’ Memo, and one of my tasks is to think up new ways to say “Save water.”  So when one of our faculty members suggested repeated experiments with drain circling, it seemed inappropriate for a publication that had been recommending fewer showers and less shampoo.  We weighed the alternatives:  irritate the faculty member or irritate the ship’s staff captain and my boss decided we should print the notice. 

As a scientific experiment, it’s nonsense.  Even in calm seas, the ship rocks enough that the water in the sink isn’t still.  The sink doesn’t hold enough water to create a spiraling drain.  And the ship had crossed the equator 12 hours before the Deans’ Memo was published.  I gritted my teeth and did as I was told.

Five minutes after I sent out the Deans’ Memo, I got an email:  You’re a day late and a dollar short.  We already crossed the equator.

From the faculty member who submitted the notice.

In my position, I have to suffer fools all the time.  I don’t promise to do it silently.