by Molly Bell

 

What to Write?

I was assigned to write a humor story and have a draft in two weeks. During the proposed two weeks I was scheduled to be on a vacation on a Mediterranean cruise. The flight over to our first stop, Barcelona, took about twenty hours. I cannot sleep on planes, no matter how hard I try. So, during these twenty hours of traveling, I wracked my brain for humor ideas. A spider who doesn’t like the taste of blood? A dark comedy about death? A librarian at a rave? I felt like I could write a paragraph about all of my ideas, but not a whole story.

We visited Barcelona for two days and yet I still had no ideas. We arrived at our cruise port and had just begun to settle in when the loud intercom stated that all passengers must participate in a drill to prepare in case the boat began to sink. We were supposed to read the instructions on the door, which we did. Thirty minutes later, the false alarm sounded. We grabbed our life vests and followed the instructions. We walked down one flight of stairs and met others in the Medusa Lounge. The room was a bar surrounded by big comfy orange chairs decorated in an ocean theme. We were told to put our orange life vests on, and wait for instructions. The life vests were strapped tightly around everyone’s necks, forcing our heads to a 45° angle. Struggling to push my head up to look at my surroundings, I saw it. my humor story: cruises.

Orange Life Vests

            I started laughing at the sight I was viewing. There were about fifty people in the Medusa Lounge: young and old, male and female, short and tall. All of us were sitting in the comfy orange chairs, trying to force our heads back to a straight up positions that our ridiculous uncomfortable orange life vests. We all came to this cruise to take a break from our lives, be relaxed, and see beautiful places. I don’t know about everyone else, but at that moment, I wasn’t relaxed, or seeing beautiful places, but I guess I was getting a break from my normal life.

Same Three Words/Phrases

After that experience, we went back to our room and there was an itinerary placed on my bed. At the top of the paper was the logo of the cruise we were on. It is a school of fish. About ten of them are going one way and one is going the other.

Our cruise was supposed to be different from the other cruises. We, the “freestyle” fish, were allowed to wear casual clothes to dinner when other cruise companies required guests to dress up. This supposedly made this cruise young and fresh. In reality, the majority of people were over sixty and still went on slow long tours of the cities we were traveling to instead of roaming free. This cruise still went along with the school of fish or herd of cows or sheep or whatever metaphor you want to use. This freestyle cruise just let us do it in more relaxing clothes.

Rome on Your Own

            Our first port on the cruise was the closest port to Rome, Italy. We decided to take the excursion called “Rome on Your Own.” All of the excursions have cute little names for them like “Tastes of Rome.” Anyway, our excursion “Rome on Your Own,” consisted of just two hour bus transportation to and from Rome, allowing free time to explore the city. Our bus’s tour guide was born and raised in Italy and knew the languages Italian, English, and Spanish. He was more of an annoyance on the trip than a help. He told us all of the places in both English and Spanish. We had previously visited Rome, so listening to him tell us all the places we should see was boring and repetitive. These speeches gave me a headache, adding to my already horrible carsickness.

Whenever he mentioned a specific place or building in Rome, all of the older men put their unfashionable glasses on and put their city maps close to their faces. You would think that they were glued together. The tour guide used the same three words or phrases almost every other word: important, St. Peter’s Square, and beautiful. I’ll give an example: “Hello everyone. I am going to tell you about the beautiful Rome. I recommend the most important St. Peter’s Square. It is very beautiful, but it is important to know beautiful St. Peter’s Square is not where I drop you off.” He used the word important so much that the importance of the word important is lost to me. But, on the other hand, I understand. I’m learning Kiswahili and I only know the words “eat,” “sleep,” and “go.” So, my sentences sound like “I go to school and go to get food to eat and go home to sleep.”

To make sure we weren’t sleeping throughout his lectures, he would tell us silly jokes. One joke I particularly liked was when he was telling us a “secret tip” on how to get quickly to the Sistine Chapel from, none other than, St. Peter’s Square. “Everyone listen, this is very important. To be able to get quickly to the beautiful Sistine Chapel from the important beautiful St. Peter’s Square, you must stand in line in important St. Peter’s Square to get in to the beautiful Vatican. Then you exit important St. Peter’s Square, and enter immediately the beautiful Vatican. Then you go to important museum where you can enter beautiful Sistine Chapel. There is one other way you can get into beautiful Sistine Chapel one other way and avoid long lines, but you must kill two Swiss guards.

Shake What Your Mama Gave Ya

            A few days later, we enjoyed a day at sea. Each day, we got a list of shipboard activities in which we were invited to participate. I decided to sit and read the list. Every second of the day was accounted for. All of the activities seem to break into three age groups: old, teen, and child. The exciting activities for the young adults and middle aged (although I’m not sure what they’d be) seemed to be out of the picture. Although technically I still fit into the “teen” category for another two months, I’d prefer to avoid playing boring “get to know you games” such as “ten fingers” and “two truths and a lie.” I consider my parents to be in the middle age section. So, what do we do? We were stuck on a boat with no activities to do. Oh no. I was going to die with no silly activities to do.

            I looked at the titles of the activities with my parents. The activity titles were sometimes funnier then the activities themselves such as, “Walk a Mile with Amanda (our “Fitness Coordinator”).”

            Suddenly, one of my parent’s finger flew down to an activity at four twenty. I looked where her finger was placed: BINGO. Cruise-ship BINGO: could anything be more cliché. Eventually I was talked into going to BINGO.

            We walked up the millions-okay, six flights-of stairs into the Spinnaker Lounge where BINGO was scheduled to take place. It was an odd sight. The Spinnaker Lounge was a hip and trendy lounge and bar. The room contained a dart board, pool table, and various electronic casino card games. There was a small stage at the front for a band to play. The lounge with a bar and pool table was filled with about twenty white haired old ladies and ten grey haired men waiting to play the wondrous game of BINGO.

            We got up to the front and bought into the game as inexpensively as possible: $40, four games, six cards per game. Others were willing to pay over $80 for a small electronic BINGO device. The people who bought them did nothing. They press go and wait to see if they have a BINGO. What’s the fun in that? Yes, they have a better chance in winning, but that’s rare and they wasted their money and had no fun playing the game.

            After everyone paid for their cards or electronic devices, the BINGO coordinators explained the rules. One rule stuck out to me, “When you have one more space to go before you get a BINGO, you have to stand up and shake what your mama gave ya.” Can you imagine standing up in front of a bunch of strangers and shaking what your mama gave ya?

            When the polite old BINGO players wouldn’t get the number and letter they wanted, they would exclaim “Aw…..ship.” Although it was cute, I’m pretty sure everyone in that room had heard the word “shit” before. Then, every once in a while, someone would have the BINGO’s equivalent to Uno and we all anticipated the “shake what your mama gave ya” dance. And sure enough, every person who had an Uno stood up and shook their behind. Luckily (or unluckily, whichever way you want to look at it), we never got close.

The King of Rock and Roll

            One night, I didn’t have anything to watch on the miniscule television in our room, so I decided to watch a competition that was filmed the night before on the cruise during a party. The cruise held many parties. Each one had a different theme. (I never went to any of the parties. They were full of sixty year olds. That is exactly what a seventeen year old girl wants to do.) One night was a white theme (everyone wore all white), one night was a disco and 70’s theme, and the competition I was watching on t.v. was themed 50’s and 60’s.

            There were four volunteers for this highly entertaining competition. The competition was to see who the best “Elvis” impersonator was. Four men (actually one was a boy) volunteered to dance and lip-synch to an Elvis song and the crowd would vote using an applause-o-meter on who was the best. 

            The first man was up. This white man was in his late fifties and was a little on the heavy side. The music started and he lip-synched and wiggled his hips. While doing so, he unbuttoned his shirt. The next guy up was an Asian guy in his late twenties. He smiled a lot and tried to woo the ladies. The third up was a five year old boy who, when the music started, froze then ran to his dad. The last, but not least, guy was also Asian and in his mid forties. He put his heart and soul into his shaking hips to the singing of the King of Rock and Roll. The last guy won. Although I was laughing at them, I respected them a lot. I could never go up in front of a billion strangers and shake my hips like Elvis, making up choreography as the song played. I would freeze and run to my mom, as the little boy did with his dad.

Rolling Balls

            My parents and I were bored one day and decided to go up to the Spinnaker Lounge-no BINGO this time-and play pool. I don’t know if that was a great idea. Have you ever tried to play pool on a moving boat? We had to hit the cue ball while it was moving. After splitting the balls apart, they would all slowly roll to whichever side of the table the boat was leaning toward. Sometimes, the boat would help our game. I would hit a ball next to a hole and on land, it wouldn’t have gone in, but on the boat, the waves would cause the ball to slowly fall into the hole. After playing a few games, we decided to play cards.

The Bitter Sweet Truth

            The one activity our whole family wanted to do was go and see the cruise ship shows. Cruise ship performances have a bad reputation. Some broke the stereotype and were fantastic. Others, I could have lived without. The most, let’s say, interesting, performance was about a reality show that was an impersonation of “American Idol.” The host of the “reality show” was actually the cruise activities director. There was an applause-o-meter that we had to participate in to determine which “contestant” would get voted off. Near the end of the performance, they encouraged us to get on our feet. I could only think one thing, great, more dancing.

            My parents got up and clapped and bounced to the music along with the rest of the audience. I looked around at the people in the crowded Stardust Theater.” The average age of people in the audience was sixty, and the atmosphere felt like I was at a concert…except the music was chosen to satisfy an older crowd, and the crowd was indeed older.

Watching the older couples dancing, playing BINGO and having a great time on shore excursions, many thoughts raced through my head. My family makes traveling a priority. We do not splurge on cars or gigantic houses. Instead, we go on one major trip out of the country each year. Last year we traveled to countries surrounding Germany, and next year it may be South America.

            Since travel is such a tradition and habit for me, I sometimes forget how much of a privilege it is. I look at these couples taking the amazing Mediterranean cruise and think that they probably have saved money for this for a long time. A lifetime maybe. This made me upset that this trip was “it” for them. After these two weeks, game over. But then I see them so happy. They are having a blast dancing to oldies music. They are having the time of their lives. I could see in their eyes all of their savings and struggles were worth it.

Back to the Boat

            Even though cruises may not be the most fun experience a teenager could think of, I had a blast. I was very sad to leave the boat and stay in a hotel the night before we headed for home. To catch our flight back to Berkeley, we had to get up at two o’clock in the morning. Our hotel in Istanbul arranged a taxi for us and we were upset our vacation was over. En route to the airport, our driver misunderstood where we needed to go and accidentally pulled into the cruise’s port. We explained the misunderstanding, but we wished he was correct so we could continue being “freestyle fish”.