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Our electrician's mate Jenkins took "weird hobby" to a whole new level during our 84-day patrol in the Pacific.
Jenkins wasn't always strange. But around day 15, something changed. I caught him collecting a clipping when Chief Rodriguez trimmed his mustache. That's when it started.
It started when we found him collecting fingernail clippings in a small tin box. Not just his own - he'd ask everyone on the boat for theirs. Most guys thought it was disgusting, but boredom makes you do strange things underwater, so they gave them to him anyway.
By week three, word had spread. Some sailors started saving their clippings deliberately, leaving little piles on his rack.
When asked what he was doing with all those nail clippings, Jenkins just smiled and said, "Wait and see."
Day 40, disaster struck. During a rapid dive maneuver, Jenkins' box tipped over, scattering three weeks of collection across the control room. The look of devastation on his face as he scrambled to recover tiny fragments was heartbreaking.
Surprisingly, our XO helped him gather the scattered clippings, saying, "A man needs something to tend to, or he'll tend to madness."
After that incident, Jenkins was officially allocated space on the mess hall bulletin board. It became a ritual - during meals, crew members would solemnly present their nail clippings to Jenkins like offerings.
By day 30, he'd transformed it into what he called his "nail farm." He'd glued hundreds of fingernail clippings onto cardboard, arranged like tiny crops with little paths between them.
The captain wanted it taken down immediately, but our chief convinced him it was keeping Jenkins sane, so they let it stay.
When we hit day 60 without surfacing, morale was low. Jenkins unveiled his creation, now covering nearly two square feet with tiny paper flags bearing our names.
"Welcome to Nail Haven," he announced. "Population: 146."
What should have been met with ridicule instead brought unexpected comfort. Grown men, nuclear technicians and weapons specialists, gathered around asking where their plots were located.
The sonar operator, suffering acute claustrophobia, smiled for the first time in weeks when Jenkins showed him his "lake house" made from thumb clippings.
Most surprising were Jenkins' daily "news reports" from Nail Haven. "Today in the western quadrant, Lieutenant Peterson's cow farm is expanding." These absurd updates became the highlight of dinner conversation. Men who hadn't spoken in weeks were suddenly debating irrigation techniques for their fingernail plots.
When we captured an enemy surveillance device, the captain, breaking protocol, presented the metal fragment to Jenkins, who incorporated it as the "town monument" in the center of Nail Haven.
The farm became our unexpected stress relief valve. When we had a near-collision with a foreign vessel, Jenkins announced a "hurricane" had hit the eastern quadrant. The crew gathered anxiously as he "assessed the damage" - rearranging sections to show aftermath. Somehow, seeing the disaster play out on the nail farm made our real-life close call easier to process.
Jenkins developed an intricate classification system - thumbnails became livestock, pinky nails were used for fencing, index fingernails formed buildings. He even established a crude trading system where sailors could exchange nail real estate based on favors or poker debts.
What began as a weird hobby transformed into a living psychological outlet. Our ship's doctor started recommending time observing the farm to sailors showing signs of submarine-induced claustrophobia. "It gives them a world beyond our metal tube," he explained when the captain questioned the practice.
Jenkins would sit there during his off hours, staring at his nail farm, adding little details - microscopic barns made from folded paper, teensy water towers from pen caps. He'd narrate stories about the "nail people" who lived there, giving them names and personalities based on whose nails they came from.
When we finally surfaced, Jenkins carefully removed his creation and mailed it to his girlfriend. We all thought she'd be horrified.
They got married last year.