Cruise Musings

When we last left our intrepid adventurer he was trying to wash the fear off of his body.  Because that is totally what intrepid adventurers do.  

Let me show off more of my bold actions on this trip. The day before we went on the snorkeling adventure we went into the town of Freeport.  The first stop was a marketplace.  

The marketplace was an adventure as well.  There were a bunch of stalls housing brightly colored clothes, t-shirts, local crafts, and jewelry.  The proprietor of each spot was very vocal in their invitation to please buy from them.  This doesn't work for me.  I can't even make eye contact with anyone wearing a blue polo shirt at Best Buy.  If I happen to be wearing my blue polo I avoid me.  The hard sell makes me want to run away.  I fear if there comes a time I am dying of thirst and the only water available is being aggressively peddled by an overly gregarious person I will opt for thirst.

"Hey, there, sport, I got some top of the line H20 for you right here.  This water is wet and cold and will give your body life. The price is right, too." 

To which I respond, "That's okay, I'm just looking. " *cough* *gasp* *fall*

This fear of salespeople is just one of my issues.  I don't know if there is an entry in the DSM for another mental malady I seem to have. I'll use a story to illustrate what it is.

A while back Lori and I went to the Sprint Center to see a concert.  We sat down just as the opening act started. Soon after we sat down the people next to us decided it was time to make a visit to the concession stand.  Not three minutes later two different people came and sat in the recently vacated seats.  This kicked in my mental malady.  I started stewing about what was going to happen when the first people returned.* This made total sense as I was the duly appointed captain of the row.  Nobody knew I was the captain but I was on duty.  

This unfounded anxiety is brought to a boil whenever I travel by air.  

Some people put on sleep masks and plant their earbuds to detach and relax.  I need to do that because my captain of the row genes kick in and I am dropped into deep anxiety as people don't do what they are supposed to do.  They stop and spend an inordinate amount of time arranging their bags and such making it impossible for others to move, delaying the whole process which means the plane will be late taking off and I will miss my connector flight in Dallas which means I will have to pay for an extra hotel room night which means my monthly budget will be blown causing me to fail to save for my retirement and I will have to work at some fast food joint well into my seventies which causes me to eat french fries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner thus my cholesterol levels go through the roof hardening my arteries to the point that I pass away quietly in the break room while watching reruns of Dick Van Dyke on my smartphone.  All this happens because some lady wants to put her roller bag, her coat, and a shopping bag holding a teddy bear roughly the size of a Ford Escort in the overhead bin which is...against...the...rules!  

Then again, maybe not.  

*When the people came back everything turned out fine.  The people sitting next to the seats in question were in the wrong row and politely moved making room for the right people in the right spots.  It was a good thing I was there to spend all that mental energy making it possible for the right thing to happen with no actual action on my part.

Vacation

Lori was very generous this holiday season and took me and her twin sons on a cruise to the Bahamas.

I had never been on a cruise or to the Bahamas so it was chock full of new experiences. 

We went to the piano bar one evening.  The performer was Barry.  Barry proudly stated that he had been performing on cruises for 23 years.  There is an old axiom in education: some experienced teachers have taught for 23 years and some have taught 1 year 23 times.  Well, piano man Barry seemed to be doing the same shtick he had done each of those 23 years .  The humor was flat and sexist and forced and he played Billy Joel's Piano Man like the third song.  Everybody knows you save that one for towards the end.  

We signed up for a snorkeling excursion in the port of Nassau. We got on a small boat and cruised out to a coral reef with about 45 of our fellow cruisers.  The place was pretty and ride was smooth.  Lori, Dustin, and Alex had experience with this activity and I had not.  I can't even really swim so I was the only one of us who popped right up when they offered the life vests.  So, we get to our destination and people put on their masks and start getting into the water.  Some with grace and some with a touch of clumsiness and yours truly with a certain je ne sais quoi, if je ne sais quoi translates to "panicked ineptitude".  

I have read a lot about how the brain works.  There are often conflicts of input and the brain must make sense of the input in order for the output of action to be decided upon.  One part of my brain could tell the life jacket was doing it's job and I was just fine.  Another part of my brain believed I was in eminent danger of drowning and never seeing any of my loved ones again.  The output of action made me look like a bobber attached to a line being mauled by a catfish of mythical size.  I heard the captain ask Lori if I was alright, a very reasonable question in the circumstances.  Since I suffer from katagelophobia (the fear of ridicule, being put down or embarrassed) I called out to him that I was fine.  Better dead than mocked, I always say.  

There was a real chunk of time when I was under control and moved through the water in a purposeful if wickedly inefficient manner.  Still my brain fought the conflicting inputs.  I would put my face in the water, the entire point of snorkeling, and the you-are-clearly-going-to-die part of my brain said "Don't breathe, for the love of all that is holy, don't breathe."  Then the you-are-currently-wearing-an-incredibly-simple-device-which-makes-it-possible-to-breathe part of my brain would allow me to take a breath and I would observe the really cool vista below me.  Then it was time for another breathe and the fight started all over again.  

When we returned to our state room I said I was going to take a shower to wash off the salt and fear.

Tourist Information

So, I saw a sign pointing the way to a building which offered tourist information.  Since I was new to the area I thought I'd stop by and see what interesting tidbits they had to offer.

I walked in the front door and was greeted by a very pleasant gentleman who appeared to be in his late 50's.

"What can I do for you, my friend?" he asked.

I pointed at the sign out on the street and said. "I'm here for some tourist information."

"Excellent," he responded and took a couple of seconds to consult a large book on the counter in front of him.  "We have Brad and Sue Chapman visiting from St. Louis.  There is a  family, the Webers, who are in town to visit the college as their oldest, Keith, is a senior in high school this year.  He's thinking maybe sociology or psychology for a major. And there is a whole bus load of folks from Iowa in town. They might even spend the night."

I thanked him for his time and turned to leave.  Before I got to the door he called to me.

"Come back tomorrow," he said. "I think we might have a group all the way from Japan."

Orphan (lack of parents) Often (frequently)

I am an orphan.  It is not all that unusual for a 55 year old person to be moving through life without parents.  It is also not unusual for a 55 year old orphan to wish the aforementioned parents were still available.  

This past weekend there were a couple of instances when I was very aware I couldn’t talk to my parents.  

Lori and I bought our Christmas tree and started putting up some decorations.  

Christmas is a time I wistfully remember my dad.  This might surprise many of the people who only knew him professionally.  He was an imposing individual.  Smart, direct, well-spoken, highly ethical, with expectations that the world ought to be a place of equality where people took care of each other.  (His level of disappointment and disgust with the politics of today would be epic.)  One of my high school buddies said he had a quiet power like Anwar Sadat.  I never crossed him.  Partially because I couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing him and partially because he could give me a single look which turned my spine to pudding.  

He was not a big fan of organized religion but he loved Christmas.  During December we referred to the station wagon he drove as the sleigh.  We kids suspected there were toys and such in the trunk space in the back of the car.  

I remember each year he got Mom some clothes.  Things which looked soft and comfortable.  He tried but I do not have memories of seeing Mom wear them.  I was not the most observant kid so maybe she did.  Ask my sister.  She paid attention.  

When the four kids got older we stopped getting up before dawn to dive into the Santa spoils under the tree.  It was then that Dad became the person chomping at the bit.  He would take his cane and pound on the ceiling of the living room which would make noise in the upstairs bedrooms of the slumbering kids - when down below there arose such a clatter.  

My dad had a difficult childhood but he was still able to be a child with us.  

Last Sunday night there was a special television show commemorating the 50th anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show.  I will always think of my mother when watching Carol.  

I  watched a lot of television growing up but it was not a solitary activity.  The entire family sat together and watched.  The most common thing on the TV was comedy.  We laughed out loud together.  Except when there was some sort of off-color joke (which were much more veiled at that time) the only one laughing was Dad and that was only obvious if you were looking at him and saw his stomach going up and down (his enjoyment of the off-color jokes was also veiled).

Carol Burnett was a favorite of my mother’s.  She had seen all the movies the show would do their spot on parodies about and got all the clever allusions.  I had not and did not.  Which also explains why later in life I would laugh out loud during classic movies for no apparent reason.  

When the Carol Burnett show had it’s final episode my mother couldn’t watch.  She suffered from what she called “sick headaches”.  These were migraines that knocked her flat.  The first day she’d be throwing up like a frat boy at 4:00 AM.  The next day she’d be exhausted and preferred staying in a darkened bedroom.  The final episode was on the second day of a sick headache.  I am sure she wanted to watch but a flickering screen was not a good idea.  This was before DVR and even before VCR.  If you missed it, you missed it.  

I remember watching the show.  The only thing I really remember about the show itself was when they surprised Carol by bringing Jimmy Stewart on stage.  I also remember sitting on the edge of Mom’s bed describing that moment to her.  I was nowhere near as accurate as a DVR but I wanted her to know what happened.  

My mother had sat on the edge of my bed for innumerable evenings reading to me.  She was constant in doing this for all of us.  She read things she chose (all the Mary Poppins books, all the Dr. Doolittle books, all the Freddy the Pig books etc. etc.) but when I got older I remember picking library books for her to read to me.  I am sure she got a huge kick out of reading “Mr. Clutch: The Jerry West Story”.

No matter how old I get my parents will always be missed.  I wish I was more like each of them.

Also, my mother would have flipped out with joy holding my daughter’s twins and my dad would have had a ball showing them a really cheesy computer game while having them sit on his lap.  

(There are hundreds of bonus points available to the gentle reader who can tell me what the orphan/often title of this post refers to.) 

An Old Favorite (re-publish from December 2006)

“Make the Snickers work” was scrawled on a piece of paper posted next to the candy machine in the lounge at work. The pain and suffering expressed by those four simple words was palpable. Novelists spend years of their lives trying to convey such emotion. They use thousands of words crafted, edited, and re-written with painstaking care in order to give the reader a sense of human longing, desire for the unattainable, striving for perfection. Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, even Danielle Steele (dated reference - maybe I should make it that 50 Shades lady now), come up short compared to this anonymous author’s reaching out to powers greater than himself to make life worth living. Maybe I am overstating things just a bit. Dante was successful a couple of times.

When the candy machine keeps your sixty cents and does not dispense the chocolate confection there is a sense of loss and frustration, and you see the struggle against the powers that be as something fruitless, or at least candy bar-less. Your will to continue is called into question. You are a poorer individual, at least sixty cents poorer (Wow, sixty cents? This is an old column). The reason you forced yourself out of your chair, trudged up two flights of stairs and poked through a fistful of loose change is taken from you. The goal is now unreachable because all you have left is pennies. The coin return of life just springs back into place without the friendly clink of coins dropping into the tray for retrieval.

The metaphor illustrated by this experience is downright stark. The act of rising up from your chair represents the energy exerted to pull yourself up from the simple and mundane and move towards something greater than oneself, something of nougat sweetness. Trudging up the stairs is emblematic of man’s continual climb towards perfection, something akin to the Eight-Fold Path described by the Enlightened One, also known as Buddha. (Have you seen pictures of Buddha? It appears that dude had access to a whole bunch of candy machines.) The loose change symbolizes the cultural and economic tokens of achievement which are tools to an end, but should not be the goal in and of themselves. Picking through the coins is like pulling the greater achievements out from amongst the lesser ones, the quarters from the pennies, so to speak. Then our “Everyman” takes those great achievements (the coins) and uses them in trade (deposits them into the slot and pushes button 22) in order to reach his ultimate goal (the Snickers bar). He stands there waiting for the corkscrew shaped holder of his heart’s desire to rotate and gently drop it a mere six inches. Then all he needs is the energy to push aside the door and grasp what he has been working for for his entire life. But no, the mechanism is still, the Snickers bar does not move. The goal is visible through the Plexiglas. It hangs there, mocking him, so close yet unattainable.

Now some people would not do what our friend did. A person of lesser character would grab hold of the machine and shake it in a craven attempt to aggressively take what was being kept from him. Others might pound on the glass protesting loudly the unfair and heartless treatment he was receiving like those earliest humans calling out to the moon as if it was a caring deity. The basest among us might have taken the nearest blunt object and burst through the boundary of glass and greedily grabbed not only the Snickers bar but also the mini chocolate donuts, the spicy barbeque chips…all the treasures in the machine without a single thought towards others. Others who, at this very moment, might be sitting in their office chairs dreaming of the time when their break will come and they can use their coins to purchase a little slice of heaven simply known as Funyuns.

Our hero did not care about his own achievements and dreams. He performed a selfless act. The call to powers greater than himself (the Candy Machine Guy) was not demanding repayment of his own lost coins. Nay, he used his energy to make a plea that the unsympathetic machine of life be repaired so others following in his footsteps would not suffer the ignoble pain of such horrible loss. This person did not place himself above others. He did not let his loss scar him and cause him to behave is a way which was beneath him. He simply and artfully wrote the words “Make the Snickers work” and left them for others to see. A sign of the danger one must face whenever one places too much worth upon a single goal.

Then again maybe he just hit button number eleven, got a bag of Skittles, and went back to work.