The barracks at military school had three red lights on each floor (deck). These were fire lights, on a different circuit (one would assume battery backed up) than the rest of the lights in the building. They were supposed to be on from dusk until dawn, and it was the Duty NCO’s job to turn them on at sunset and off at first light (or when he got up at 6:00 with the rest of us).

We, of course, called these the whorehouse lights. I can honestly say that for the first year or two I was at the school, I had no idea what else to call them. I also didn’t  really understand why they were called whorehouse lights. It wasn’t until I was 15 or 16 that I made the connection with the red lights.

The Duty NCO (usually a younger cadet–a freshman or sophomore) very often forget this important duty, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear the company commander or company first sergeant bellow down the hall, “Duty NCO, turn on the whorehouse lights!” After all, we were all guys there. Our language in the barracks was . . . coloful. Okay, profane. Immaturely so. But I digress.

So parents’ weekend rolls around and there are parents wandering through the barracks all day. But that usually doesn’t last beyond mid afternoon. By then all the parents and siblings are back at their hotels getting ready for the Marine Corps Birthday Ball to be held later that evening, and all the cadets are lounging around or cutting up before rushing to get into their dress blues just in time to make the bus for the ride into town where the Ball will be held. (The Ball is held in the basketball gym these days. Back then, our gym wasn’t large enough to hold the entire Corps of Cadets, much less their parents and dates.)

You probably know where this is going already.

I was the company commander my senior year. I walked out of my room shortly after sundown and noticed that the fire lights were off. So I did what I’d done countless times over the last year (the previous year I was the second-ranking junior cadet in the company): in my best command voice I shouted, “Duty NCO, turn on the whorehouse lights!”

Then I turned around and saw a younger cadet coming out of his room, trailed by his father, his mother, and two pre-teen sisters.

I fully expected to hear about that incident from my Drill Instructor, but I never did. Apparently the parents were either too shocked or too amused by the look on my face to further embarrass me by bringing it up with the D.I.