New Girl Aboard

Two nights ago I had a dream about being on a ship that was sinking. I was in the ship’s movie theater, sitting in a velvet seat, watching I don’t remember what, and the ship’s sirens went off (I’ve never heard a ship’s sirens but imagined them to be much like the sirens in the Poseidon) and then worried I’d have to be like Shelly Winters and swim underwater for painfully long minutes and finally expire from a heart attack before sinking with the ship and resting forever at the bottom of the sea, the film slowly unraveling from the reel floating nearby.

I’m going on a cruise tomorrow. It’s my first one.

I have questions:

1. Why don’t people wear life preservers all the time on a cruise? If we were on a speedboat in Lake Insignificant, we would be suited up. Safety first!
2. What is the deal with spouses mysteriously falling overboard? I’m not with my spouse so no worries about me in particular. But is it that easy to just fall off the boat? That’s concerning.
3. Will I have the guts to fight for a seat on the lifeboat? What if I have to elbow a young mother with a babe in arms? Do I have it in me?
4. Could there be a mutiny?

I’m not anxious, I’m just asking.

My friend got a free cruise for two and invited me to come along. I’m not keen on the idea of going on a cruise, mostly because of the problem of not being able to get off if I don’t like it. It’s like going on an endless plane ride. You’re in the tube, you have to stay in the tube.

I like traveling in a car or, better yet, a truck. You can stop and go. It’s hard to fall out. There are air bags. And scarcity is not an issue. There are always more seats in our truck than there are passengers. Thank heaven.

But I want to do it. I want to be a cruiser. I want to wear a big hat and sit in a deck chair reading a novel. Swim in a pool on a big boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Walk the deck in the moonlight and see the ship’s lights shining on the water. I want to eat and talk and laugh with my old friend. And celebrate having this time.

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Photo by Linval Ebanks on Unsplash