Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 4

All For Fun!

Around lunchtime on Day 2, the Magic still hadn't reached its first destination.  I hadn't had my first hamburger yet, but I had dined in the dining hall the night prior, which required me to squeeze into my suit.  I ate prime rib.  The au jus, a concoction that smothered everything from prime rib to pork chops, had been spiked with cheap wine and was thick enough to plug holes in the ship should it spring a leak.

My wife asked if I'd felt the boat rocking.  I hadn't, probably because of the sheer number of sleep aids my daffy doctor prescribed.  I know now that that's why I felt like I'd been been beaten with pillow cases full of soap.  I was sore, and my mood was foul.  If I'd exercised any sense, I would've put on the bathrobe provided by the ship, called room service, turned the TV on, and crawled back in bed.  I can't really fault myself for that.  By Day 2, most of rest of the ship had gone nuts.  Thankfully, my wife kept her head, and ministered to mine for too much of the trip.

A swarm, which included my wife and me, had descended upon the Lido Deck.  We'd elected to skip breakfast with its Barrel of Greasy Monkeys in favor of sleeping in, and I was still reeling from the effects of the several sleep medications I took the night before.

We were greeted with the unmistakable, relentless thud of party music, Rihanna indistinguishable from Katy Perry indistinguishable from Miley Cyrus indistinguishable from Robin Thicke.  It felt like the cruise director was trying to beat the fun into me if that's what it took per his duty and vow.  Without the slightest embellishment, I can say that the music on the Lido Deck was louder than any I've heard at any concert I've ever attended.  I'm surprised that the older passengers afflicted with osteoporosis weren't pummeled into dust and swept up by a member of the Magic's put-upon cleaning crew.  I saw one of the members of the crew on the Lido Deck every day.  She looked to be of Eastern European origin, and unceasingly dour.  Every day, she stood behind what looked to be a Swiffer-type contraption, pushing piles of food and other, unidentifiable detritus into oblivion for, if what I heard is correct, more-or-less the same salary as that of a Korean putting Air Jordans together.  I wouldn't be smiling much either, and I don't want to hear another complaint from an old person about loud rock music ever again, either.  

Avoiding human contact was out of the question, so I took my friend's good advice and watched other people.  I saw many balding middle-aged of no mean girth, many of them covered with blankets of hair so thick my wife wondered aloud whether they were wearing hair shirts.  To me, it looked like they'd been cleaning their air conditioner ducts, and were jumping in the pools to clean off.  Bands of unattended teenagers roamed in packs not like wild dogs, but like gangs of witless, mouthy Nickelodeon characters.  Women well-past menopause and just getting there lounged in beach recliners, baking like devil's food cakes.  A gentleman who looked like he put up his face for collateral at the track and his horse keeled over on the backstretch.  Most everyone, including me, was on something.

To take it all in was quite an effort.  I needed a cup of coffee whether it tasted like fertilizer or not just so I could stand in line to get something to eat.  The Mongolian Wok looked promising.  The line stretched all the way back to the water slides, but I took my chances.  I stood just behind a group of junior high kids off their ADD medication.  Their parents weren't around because they abandoned their children in favor of cocktails served in hollowed-out coconut shells that looked like Mr. Potato Head filled with alcohol.

I didn't know what the junior high kids were doing, but it didn't look like they were in line for food.  I asked their leader, a chubby seventh-grader with a haircut his dad gave him, what the hell they were up to, which sparked a tête-à-tête that I ended by leaving the line.  Our needless confrontation (truly, I wasn't spoiling for a fight) sent my head spinning.  I had flashbacks to my days as a high school English teacher.  I was reminded anew that teaching is yet another vocation I'm not cut out for.  

My dust-up with the brat in the Mongolian Wok line left me feeling especially vulnerable.  It could have been that I wasn't yet cut out for a cruise, either.  There were too many people vying for the same things at the same time, with the unremitting thud muscling in, too.  I staggered to the hamburger line in utter defeat.  It didn't surprise me that the hamburger, outfitted just the way I like it though it was, tasted like a school lunch.  Day 2 would be one to reckon with.

Shortly after finishing lunch, we met up with my family near the Lido Deck's main pool. Everybody wanted to get a closer look at the action several stories up.  I was almost completely unwound, but for the good of the whole, I dragged myself up several flights of stairs to check out the amusements we'd not yet seen, stamping and cursing most of the way.  

I didn't give a damn about waterslides, putt-putt golf, or the giant bucket that, when   filled, would tip over and douse all below with a brick of cold water.  None of that  constituted any fun for me.  My nerves shot and several stories closer to the sun, nothing was fun.  I couldn't conceive how any of it could be fun for anyone.  How could long lines for food be fun?  How was getting pummeled by cold water and bad music fun?  Aching legs and muscles were no fun either, but by the looks of things, most of the passengers, of age or not, drank the pain away.  I'd forbidden myself of that luxury.

The next thing I knew, we were back in our suite.  The walls closing in around me, all I could do was crawl into bed, crumple myself up in a ball, and cry.  Not only was I not having fun, I was also an ingrate.  My parents paid good money for my wife and me to go on this cruise, and this is how I showed my gratitude.  My wife needed this vacation desperately, and her husband was crumpled up in bed crying.  Aside from my wife and my family, at that moment, I didn't care for anyone on that ship.  They could have all the fun that was expected of them while I hid out in our room.  My wife stroked my head as I told her I was sorry for being no fun, but that the expectation for me to have any was just too great.    A guy could find a hoot and a holler anywhere on the Magic, regardless of whether he was looking for them.  No mention of kindness was to be found in the travel literature.

A guy can't even buy a pair of pants on dry land anymore without fun being forced onto him.  You go to the mall and the pants store is playing music nobody truly likes unless they're too fucked out of their skull to know any better.  It's not just the pants store that sells the ones with what looks to be a float from a Chinese New Year's parade on the pockets, either.  You can't buy a pair of Levi's without this  nonconsensual assault on your consciousness rubbing up against you, either.  

It looked like life aboard the Magic was shaping up to be one long week of buying pants, and the dining hall wouldn't be open for dinner for another several hours.  I suspected that maybe I didn't know what fun is, maybe fun is overrated, and that I just don't like fun anymore before I popped a Klonopin.