Nuthouse

This past week, I encountered the craziest people on this ship. Apparently they're offering a package for nutjobs, because they're all here.

Take for instance, this person:



Your eyes do not deceive you: this is a grown woman hula hooping her crazy heart out on the pool deck. For hours. Please note the bathing suit and braids. She is really showing off, strutting her stuff all around the pool, making sure everybody sees her. I really can't tell if she's insane or just on vacation.

I found a new special spot for me to hide out and chill. I've been really desperate for some new things to look at, and I found it on deck 7, the Promenade. I sit in a comfy padded deck chair with my Guatemalan coffee and read chicklit between sending emails on my blackberry. I'm so fortunate because I can send and receive emails at no extra cost. Thank God! I’d freak out if I couldn’t send a random thought to someone and get an immediate response. It would be so alienating! Emailing has become my new texting.

I've learned a valuable lesson about alone time. In order to dissuade anyone from intruding it's important to remove any surrounding chairs. I failed to do that yesterday, and I'll never make that mistake again. So, I'm sitting there, my nose buried in a book, and I hear "You look lonely. Mind if I join you?" Gross. So I look up at the dude that has wandered into my zone and said, very sweetly, "I'm not lonely, but you're welcome to sit there." He immediately goes, "Fine, never mind, jeez, whatever," all petulantly as if I had responded with, "no Fuckface. Why don’t you take your stupid line and shove it up your ass?" Thankfully, as he was saying it, he was practically running away so I didn't have to pretend to be all, "hey, no, don't be like that." Really, guy? I wonder what makes a person act like that. But I love ‘em when they’re walking away, so I chased after him and we made out fiercely.

That last part is not true.

Look, I know how I sound. But it can be really exhausting to be a woman; you’re constantly thwarting weird, unwanted advances. Or maybe I just attract the weird ones. That is a real possibility. I guess it would be worse if no one were interested.

The best crazy people are the old ones. Nic and I had a conversation in the ship’s diner with an older Alabaman couple. It started innocently enough with them describing all the cruises they’ve been on and somehow devolved into them saying some downright racist things about Katrina and New Orleans as Nic and I sat slack jawed. What do they care? They’re old. My favorite old person? The guy that belted out “Jesus Christ, this fucking ship!” in response to the fact that the hallway he wanted to walk down was roped off for maintenance.

But really, he had a point.