Cruise Control - Part 10: Where The Buffalo Roam

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  The Check-In Lady smiles sweetly at me. “So, you’re checking in using your birth certificate instead of a passport?”

  I gulp, having no idea how critical my answer might be. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  She hits a button on her keyboard. There’s a slight beep as her action is either benignly recorded or the Tri-Delta security police is elevated to high alert. “Could I see your certificate?” She proffers one lovingly-moisturized hand as a receiving vessel. “And a photo ID, of course.”

  Of course. One must have photo ID’s these days, especially when dealing with Republicans, who apparently think that forcing a person to have one will stop them from voting in presidential elections. I place my documents in the lotioned basket.

  “Thank you,” chirps Check-In, who then proceeds to briefly scan my personal proof of existence, and then hits a few more keys, makes a notation of some kind on a sheet of official-looking paper, pauses momentarily to adjust the collar of her perfectly-ironed blouse, because one should never appear unkempt in society, and then apparently moves on without any hesitation. “I see that you already have a credit card on file. Would you like to use that for your sign-and-sail card, or settle with cash at the end of the trip?”

  Wait a minute. That’s it? The birth certificate worked? No questions about where my passport might be? I’m actually slightly disappointed. I haven’t slept for two days, worried about the not-having-a-passport angle. Granted, I didn’t want any trouble, but there should have been at least a few sweat-inducing questions about my lack of international travel documents and whether or not I’ve left my luggage unattended for the merest of seconds.

  But no. Check-In patiently awaits my response, unable to hear the neurotic thoughts in my brain, her head slightly-tilted to one side as if she were a Pan-Am stewardess in 1963, pleasantly taking my cocktail order on a luxury flight to Greece.

  “Let’s leave it on the credit card for now,” I mumble, still befuddled about how things were turning out after troubled nightmares of being thrown into prison for wanton misplacement of my passport. “But wait. Can I put cash on the card once I’m on the ship?”

  Check-In perseveres with her award-winning smile and professional aplomb. “Of course. You can do whatever you want.” She hands me the plastic card which serves as room key, dining key, adult-beverage-purchase key, and general lifeline onboard the ship. “Enjoy your cruise!”

  And we’re done. I turn and stumble toward the rest of my family gathered in a seating area off to one side. Mom hops to her feet. “All good?”

  I smile brightly at her, nodding. I also realize this is the first time I have truly smiled in a few days. Perhaps I’m going about this in the wrong way. If only I could not worry about pointless things. If only. But it’s hard to break life habits, right?

  Mom beams. “Then let’s get on the ship.”

  So we all clatter our way toward another round of signs, leading to a series of continually-rising ramps that theoretically will take us onboard at some point. We’re trudging along the third or fourth riser, with an employee at the end of this section, a sour-faced woman who is bellowing that we need to have our important sign-and-sail cards ready for presentation up yonder.

  Mom suddenly slams to a halt. “Ummm….”

  Oh God.

  Mom: “I can’t find Roni’s card.”

  Hold up. You can’t find the card that someone handed you mere seconds ago? The super important card that you must have on this ship? Are you serious?

  Mom: “I don’t know what I did with it.”

  I don’t take this news kindly. As Mom starts frantically digging through whatever, I grit my teeth. Why is this happening? Why can you not hang on to things for the tiniest amount of time?

  Then Mom says this: “You just shouldn’t have brought me on this trip.” Frustrated and sad.

  And I melt. Yes, I’m still a little irked, but it’s Mom. We’ve had our ups and downs, as all mother-son relationships do, but at the end of the day I love her deeply, despite the fact that I don’t call anywhere near as often as I should.

  Mom makes a triumphant discovery. “Found it!”

  And on we trudge, lots of able-bodied people and one clicking wheelchair.

  At one point, we enter an area where an overly-chirpy photographer and his not-as-chirpy assistant are cajoling people into posing for photographs. (“You can buy copies on board!”) We wait patiently while clumps of three and four people pose with entire fakeness and then move on. Then the photographer addresses us. “How many”

  Thirteen. (Karen and Janet have not yet joined us, they are coming later.)

  The photographer looks stricken by such an overwhelming contingent, stepping back in horror and pretending to be interested in his camera lens. Fine by me, not a fan of having my picture taken. We march past him. We’ll do the group thing later. Love and kisses.

  Finally, after endless twisting and turning, we are actually at the point where we enter the boat. A smiling woman holds out her hand for the sacred plastic cards that we possess. Well, hopefully possess. I glance at Mom. She glances back with an expression of “I got your ass to school every day for twelve years, don’t get me started.” Cards are scanned and we traipse our way into the interior of the ship.

  We are entering on Deck 3, the Lobby deck. As first timers, you really don’t understand the importance of deck numbers and names right at first. Because, basically, you really have no conception of how big these cruise ships actually are. Yes, they look mammoth from the outside, but it doesn’t really register until you need to get from Point A to Point B. Then it becomes incredibly important.

  Anyway, our clan marches forth. And we find ourselves in an area with a mammoth atrium, stretching skyward for many decks. It’s quite impressive, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that down here, on the entrance floor, there are four billion people milling around, most of them not completely sure where to go or what to do.

  A kind attendant, noticing the fear in our eyes, explains. “You can’t go to your rooms just yet. Still loading the luggage and all. And you can’t get to most of the decks. But this deck is open, with alcohol available at the bar over there (she points lovingly and knowingly) and tons of food available up on Deck 9, the Lido Deck. And more bars.”

  This is something I’m keenly invested in at the moment, the mention of multiple bars. In fact, I’m fairly certain I could start a new religion that is alcohol-based. Worse things have happened in the history of the planet, right?

  Based on the fact that we really can’t even breathe properly on Deck 3, there are so many people pushing and jostling, it’s fairly clear that we need to get our asses on Deck 9, where there’s both food AND adult-beverages. It’s a survival instinct.

  So we make our way to a bank of elevators, only to find that most of the planet also wishes to make their way towards heaven. It’s clear that we can’t go all at once, what with so many people on the verge of brandishing switchblades just to get on a damn elevator. We wish each other luck, and then it’s every clan member for himself.

  Eventually, I manage to clamor into one of the glass-walled contraptions, along with about 300 other people, with one woman in particular that had felt it necessary to wallow in a vat of some low-grade perfume that clearly also doubled as a pesticide in third-world countries. When the doors finally opened on Deck 9, I stumbled out of the confinement, gasping and wishing for the death of strangers who douche incorrectly.

  And I found the rest of the family, staring at me with an air of wonderment about why it had taken me so long to join them. So sorry. I didn’t realize this was a race. My bad.

  So we assess our predicament, and the general consensus is that we should get something to eat, and then deal with whatever after that. A few of us are a bit hesitant, eyeing the enticingly-placed, liquor-proffering bars perched here and there, but we should at least be nice to one another on the first day. After that, screw everybody.

  We meander into what we will soon know as the “buffet area” of Deck 9 (Lido Deck for those keeping score), and peruse our options. There are thousands of people in this space, fighting over free food and hogging the places to sit. Somebody spies an unoccupied table, way in the back of yonder, and an emissary is sent to stake a claim. The rest of us get in one of the several buffet lines, definitely on a learning curve and making things up as we go.

  And the next lesson in our Carnival syllabus involves an introduction to the wildlife species know as the Buffet Buffalos. Your first encounter with these animals can be quite startling, especially if no one has bothered to adequately prepare you for what these animals do in their native habitat.

  Firstly, these are very impatient creatures, hopping from one foot to another in anticipation, craning their necks to better study the freshly laid-out grub ahead, and knocking the civilized people about, completely unaware that they are practically drooling down the back of your neck and letting loose with primal grunts.

  Secondly, the Buffet Buffalos go completely insane once the line moves forward enough that they can actually begin shoveling food onto their surfboard-size plate, serving themselves mountains of steaming everything, with juices and gravy splashing all over the place. Their plates will become so heavy that they can’t even carry them, and instead start shoving them down the buffet counter from one serving station to another, piling on more grease-drenched this and fat-based that.

  It is completely unbelievable the first time you see this.

  Oh, and the Buffalos have catchphrases that they utter, things like “Why are you just giving me ONE chicken-fried steak. I want FIVE” and “I’m just going to take this entire jug of ranch dressing with me, they have more” and “I am SO hungry!” even though they are still belching from the last meal and haven’t even bothered to wipe their chins off.

  Tiffany and I just looked at each other, stunned. What happened to these people in their lives that made them be such gluttonous pigs? Geez.

  We hoist our modest-portioned trays at the end of the line, and head toward the distant table that is hopefully still being saved for us, carefully avoiding a few thundering buffalos who are actually headed back to the line to fill up another tray, before they’ve even touched the first one, in case something goes horribly wrong and the endless food stops pouring out of the kitchen for two seconds.

  There is no way, in hell, that these folks can even eat half of the food they have taken. No way. I don’t care what special talents they may have, or what type of training programs they may have been involved with in the livestock pens of local farms, they cannot get all of that food in their bodies.

  It’s obviously never occurred to these people that if they didn’t waste so much food, the cruise tickets would be cheaper. But that line of thinking involves logic and restraint, and the Buffet Buffalos are clearly complete strangers to both of those concepts.

  The journey to our table takes a bit longer than we care for it to take. There are people everywhere, with over-excited children, further stimulated by the free ice cream gushing out of self-serve machines, dashing about and bouncing off things like a giant pinball machine. One innovative little urchin even plops his empty juice cup on my tray before scampering toward an older brother urging him to hurry up before anyone made them stop having fun. Two points for neatness, but you’re still a brat.

  Oh, and we were still lugging around our carry-ons, can’t get to our rooms yet and all. So there we are, struggling along, hot and sweaty and tired and trying to keep everything from sliding off our trays and whacking innocent grandmas in the back of the head. And the soundtrack of our trek is the ceaseless, irritating drone of hundreds of strangers babbling about nothing.

  It is right at this frustrated point, with all the etiquette-deprived people and my disdain for crowds, that I start to think “Wow, I really might have made a mistake coming on this cruise. What was I thinking?”

  We get to our table and plop down our trays. Tiffany and I start to disinterestedly pick at the food. (Side note: The food looked and tasted mighty fine. We were just, well, pretty much done at the moment.) Then we hear someone clear their throat, and we look up.

  A smiling Carnival person is standing there, bearing a tray with large, tropical, probably adult-oriented drinks. A small sign on the tray announces that these little jewels are nine bucks a piece, further bolstering their possible adultness.

  “Do those things have alcohol?”

  “Yes, sir. They have rum and vodka and-”

  “I’ll take five of them. Tiffany, you want anything?”


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Cruise Control - Part 9: The Passport Man Cometh

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  I just look at the security guard, slightly stunned. She wants me to take everything out of my laptop bag, and there’s a ton of crap in there. It’s crammed with things I thought I might possibly need while on a cruise. What did I do to trigger this kind of search?

  As I flip open one of the zippered sections and start to haul out the 74 different power cords contained within, Nosey Nancy’s neighbor leans in. “Just the laptop, sir.” Then she glares at her co-worker, a look that questions why Nancy is being so difficult.

  Nancy glares back. (Why do you continue to breathe? You know this is what I live for.) But Nancy relents and confirms. “Just the laptop.”

  I pull out the larger of my two laptops and cooperatively place it in the bin, lovingly patting it because we’ve shared so many experiences together. Then I haul out the smaller netbook. “Both of them?”

  Nancy’s eyes spark again, awash with renewed suspicion. (Who takes two laptops on a cruise? I knew you were a terrorist!) But she refrains from tackling me to the ground. “Yes, both of them.”

  I place the netbook on top of the laptop. Nancy immediately separates the two so that they are not touching, tidying up after my apparent glaring breach of protocol. Just to make sure that I don’t break anymore rules, I clarify my next action. “Anything else?”

  This intrigues Nancy’s neighbor, and she leans in again. “Do you have another laptop?” (Perhaps I am about to break some type of record, and Neighbor will have something exciting to share with her co-workers on the next coffee break.)

  “Um, no. But I have a Nook and a Kindle and a-”

  This is no longer interesting to either of them. Neighbor leans back to her own station and Nancy waves at me to head on through the body scanner thing. I step forward, heart slightly accelerated, as the rest of my belongings are trundled into the evil world that lives under the flaps of the luggage scanner.

  I do NOT like going through security, makes me feel like a criminal even though I’m clearly not or I would live in a nicer house. I’m always half-convinced that they are going to find the exact ingredients that can accidentally make a weapon of mass destruction, and I will end up in a Turkish prison, where Internet access is sure to be unreliable.

  But alarms did not sound and men wearing matching storm trooper gear did not surround me, so we’ll assume that nothing tawdry was found in my luggage or my person. I was quickly doing the mad scramble one does at the tail-end of the security process, where you frantically try to retrieve your phone, get your shoes and belt back on, and cram your laptop back into a bag that suddenly seems three sizes too small, all while impatient people behind you are clearing their throats in irritation because they only had one thing to scan and you had 27.

  So now I’m in a little holding area where you wait for the rest of your loved ones to get through the lines, assuming that you are still on speaking terms with these people after the drive to Galveston. Most of the gang was already through, and I did a headcount to determine who might be missing this time. Okay, Mom and Roni. Hmm.

  This was very interesting. At the start of all this security mess, when the rest of us were slowly inching forward in the lines, any enjoyment of life sucked out of us, I had spied Mom and Roni racing down the “special access” lane for people with wheelchairs and such. There was hardly anybody in that line, so the two of them were whizzing through, with Roni high-fiving the air and Mom, little legs pumping as she pushed the chair, grinning happily that they didn’t have to sloth their way along like everybody else.

  So they should have been through security by now. But they weren’t. Oh boy.

  I wandered over to that special lane, and there was Roni at the walk-thru (roll-thru) detector, with personnel intensely studying every aspect of her wheelchair like they expected a cruise missile to drop out her ass. This always irks me greatly. She can’t move the left half of her body. Exactly what kind of mischief do they expect her to get up to? Meanwhile, unwashed, wild-eyed jerks wearing Anti-American t-shirts waltz right through without anybody batting an eye. Idiots.

  Speaking of unwashed, though, we had another example of that at a table near where our huddled family was standing. It seems one of the guards had gotten a little suspicious about a certain man who was trying to carry a case of bottled water onto the boat. Lo and behold, as the guard checked the bottles with great detail, he began confiscating some of them. Turns out they were full of vodka, and carrying your own alcohol onto the ship was extremely verboten.

  Now, I am by no means condoning such behavior, but I would suggest that if you want to try something like this, you probably shouldn’t draw attention to yourself by not bathing, sporting one of the most unattractive head-banger hairdos ever known, wearing enough gaudy gold jewelry that you could melt it down into a tank, and having that really-short-man attitude of the world owing him something more than platform shoes.

  To make him even more special, the man was getting somewhat belligerent about being challenged for doing something wrong. Dude, you got busted. Suck it up. And go see a stylist. I’ll even pay for the visit, if it means you’ll never walk by me again looking like that.

  The fun didn’t stop there. Suddenly, we had a security guard on the other side of us politely asking another man to stop taking pictures of the alcohol raid with his phone. (“No pictures allowed in the security area.” Just like the 15 signs posted everywhere said.) Picture man gets all smart-ass, waving his phone around. “Too late! Already got the picture. Hah!” Proud of himself for being an arrogant jerk.

  Geez. Just what kind of people were they allowing on this boat?

  Mom and Roni rolled up just then, with Mom looking like sometimes she’s just not real happy about having to do certain things, and Roni looking like she was determined to learn how to walk again just so she could come back here and kick someone’s ass. Our little clan is reunited and we can move to the next stage of what is starting to be a lengthy ordeal. (One that is not even hinted at on the happily chirping Carnival website, I might add.)

  We head down this one hallway thing, and find signs directing us to escalators and elevators. Apparently the next bit of the check-in experience requires its own floor, so this should be real fun. We arrive on the this new floor, and find a room triple the size of the one below, and crammed with a population bigger than most counties in Oklahoma. And we have more lines, snaking about and doubling back and forth on themselves.

  Sigh Number Forty-One.

  So we get in one of the lines, and even though things are moving more quickly than expected, it’s still a very patience-testing process, what with that doubling-back thing where you keep encountering the same people, running out of ways to politely nod at these reappearing people until you just get tired of it and keep your eyes downcast on the ugly carpet pattern below you. Way at the other end of the lines is a bank of Carnival folks doing the final check-in business. We may never get there in our lifetime, but we’re going to try.

  Suddenly, Mom (who had disappeared with Roni as they once again headed to a “special access” lane), is back with us, hollering something about she’s already at the check-in counter, but we have to check in together because we booked together. They said to get you out of the line. Come on!

  We look at each other for half a second  (Is she telling the truth or is she drunk?), then we are all leaping over the line dividers and thundering down the length of the room like somebody was after us with cattle prods and a can of Crisco, darting around slow-ass strangers and whacking things with our carry-ons.

  We arrive breathlessly at the check-in counter where Mom is standing. Her face is aglow because she knows she just pulled a golden ticket out of her Willy Wonka chocolate bar by getting us all leap-frogged up here. We love her. Until she loses something else.

  So Check-In Lady starts doing her thing, processing each person singly, and it takes a bit, because you have to set up expense accounts and whatnot. (The boat is mostly cashless, you just run around with a little credit card thing, happily and ignorantly running up a tab that might scare the hell out of you at the end of the cruise.) It’s a little boring, waiting your turn, but the very nice lady punching on the computer is very pleasant and efficient.

  Turns out that not everyone at Carnival is so helpful, though. And we got to meet Wretched Gretchen a few minutes later.

  She comes stomping up right behind me. “You’re gonna have to move.”

  Me: “But we’re checking in.”

  Wretched: “You’re blocking the walkway. People can’t get through.” She then stabs her finger at one single person who has to adjust slightly to the right as they pass.

  Me: “But we’re checking in. Right now.” With this lovely person who obviously went to a different school than you.

  Wretched: “All of you? On the same booking?”

  Me: “Uh, yeah. Same booking.” Otherwise we wouldn’t all be standing here, you twit.

  She rolls her eyes dramatically (Tiffany scribbles a note to herself to practice this technique, because it really did look very impressive), then stomps away. Twelve seconds later she’s back. “You are blocking the walkway.” She stabs her finger at another victim of our heinous crime, this time an old man dragging along an oxygen tank as he skirts around us, a much more traumatizing sight than our first victim, but still.

  Me: “What do you want us to do?” Ride on each other’s shoulders?

  Wretched: “You need to hurry!” Then she glares at our check-in lady before stomping away again.

  Check-In Lady glares back at Wretched Gretchen, and her look makes it very clear that she could happily bludgeon Gretchen to death with a stapler and not think twice about it. But she does type a wee bit faster, even though she had been doing just fine before.

  Our group begins to dwindle, as fully-authorized family members go racing off to the next area, waving their fancy little room-key credit card things and babbling excitedly. As fate would have it, I’m the very last one to be checked in, meaning I have to stand there and sweat the longest, because I’m still not sure if there is going to be an issue with me not having a passport. I have been worried about this for two days now, and judging by how our adventure has gone so far, my hopes are a little battered.

  “Brian? Could you please step forward?”


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Cruise Control - Part 8: Sweat and Security

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  So the little baggage attendant person finishes opening the gate, and marches into the holding area to begin the search for Mom’s luggage. Mom, just trying to be helpful but perhaps misunderstanding the protocol in this place, dashes forth as well, only to have the attendant politely shove her back. No, no, Mrs. Ma’am Woman. You do not have authorized access. Please go back over there and wait with your passport-losing, automobile-destroying, very talkative family.

  Thusly, our family huddles in a concerned pack off to one side. Well, most of us huddle. Some of the youngsters are so wired for sound by now that they are thundering all over the place. And some of the oldsters are so desperate for a drink at this point that they are considering sucking down the bottles of hand sanitizers in their purses.

  This is just too much excitement for me to properly enjoy, so I head back outside, hoping that watching other families struggle to get on board properly will distract me from my own troubles. I spy Tiffany leaning against the same wall as before, only having moved roughly two inches, probably so that she could better position herself for random paparazzi photos. “Are we ever going to get on this boat?” she inquires, the expression on her face indicating that the nature of my response just might determine her sanity.

  I sigh. “I don’t know. They’re looking for the passport now. If Roni doesn’t have it, she can’t get on.” (Internally, I’m also thinking that I’m depending on a copy of my birth certificate to get myself on board, and I won’t relax about the possible failure of that whole mess until the cruise is over and we are back in Dallas. But one disaster at a time, right?)

  Tiffany nods her head slightly, a gesture that could mean she grasps the criticality of the situation but is being quietly supportive, or she’s wondering if the guy who left the intriguing comment on her Facebook wall last night really thinks she’s interesting and fun or he just wants her sexually. Such are the quandaries faced by high-fashion supermodels who are waiting for the rest of the world to figure out that’s what they are.

  We just stand for a while, because there’s really nothing else we can go until the verdict is returned by the flower-shirted baggage man. We idly stare at the same cracks in the sidewalk. We grimace at the multiples signs all over the place proclaiming “Keep track of your passport at all times, people!” We sigh as hundreds of other joyous families stomp past us, smiling happily with the comfortable assurance that their lives are completely in order.

  “I hate them,” mutters Tiffany.

  “I want to slap them,” I concur.

  Just then, Mom comes rocketing out of the baggage warehouse like she’s just been shot out of the chute at a local rodeo. “We found Roni’s passport!” Cheers erupt and there is spontaneous celebration. In the midst of the revelry, Roni determinedly wheels her chair over to Mom, snatches her passport out of Mom’s hand, and promptly shoves it at her son, Crispy. Mom has just been relieved of Passport Retention Duty.

  It’s always startling when your children turn on you, isn’t it? One day you’re throwing powder on their butt, the next day they are taking legislative action against you.

  There’s a cry of greeting, and we turn to see Terry, Darrin and Tara returning from the long-term parking lot, which is apparently based in Atlanta, considering how long it took for them to return. (And how the hell did Tara end up with them? She wasn’t driving one of the cars. But I don’t say anything because I did sort of notice that Tara had been missing quite some time ago, but I didn’t bother to follow up on it once all the excitement started with dead batteries and Mom shoving things where they didn’t belong. My bad.)

  But wait, something was still off here. “Where’s Launa?” I inquire.

  The returning trio just looked at me blankly, as if asking “Do you see a badge anywhere on our bodies identifying us as being responsible for the welfare of other human beings?”

  Well, no, I don’t, but she was with you when you left. Wouldn’t it be, oh, proper etiquette for her to still be with you when you come back? Am I missing something here?

  Tara explains. “We took the last seats on the bus. And Launa was still doing something with the van.” (Discovering forgotten travel companions?) “She’ll get on the next bus.” Then the three of them promptly moved on with their lives.

  Oh boy. I didn’t really care for such a behavior making an appearance this early in the trip. Later in the week, when we were all absolutely sick of the sight of each other, it would be understandable to leave people behind, with intentional vengeance. But right now, shouldn’t we still pretend to love one another?

  Mom stopped not paying attention and joined the conversation. “Where’s Launa?”

  Tara sighed. Good God, what do you people think we did with her? It’s not like this is an episode of Law and Order. “She should be on the next bus.” Anybody else want to ask that same question? Should I distribute a flyer?

  Mom looked at me, as if to say “This doesn’t feel right. How could you let this happen?”

  Me? I didn’t do anything, you Irresponsible Passport Person. Wait, I was one of those persons, too. I’d best opt for another response. “I guess we just wait for Launa.”

  Then everybody picked up their carry-ons and walked away, leaving me standing there.

  Hold up. How is walking away considered waiting? Do I just not speak the same language as the rest of my family?

  Tara sighed again, because having to explain things all the time was really getting tiring. “The buses from the parking lots come in down there. That’s where we going.” To wait for Launa. The person you apparently think we strangled and shoved behind a Starbucks somewhere.

  Oh. Got it. Great idea, that, waiting for someone in a place that they would show up. Good thinking.

  So we clatter our way down to the other end of the loading area, and we set up temporary camp. As each bus arrives, we personally inspect every single occupant that descends the steps. All of these people keep turning out to not be Launa. They also turn out to not be impressed with a pack of wild-eyed Oklahomans staring at them with dissatisfaction that they are not someone else.

  This goes on for a while. How many buses are there? How many parking lots? Did Launa decide that all of this was not really worth it and is somewhere on the Interstate, thumb out, ready to ride what she must in order to escape?

  Mom gets worried. “I’m gonna walk back over where we were in case Launa is there.” She starts to trottle off.

  Um, no, we don’t need another sheep straying, especially one that is not going to win any awards today for keeping track of things. “She’d have to walk past us to get there. We would have seen her.”

  Mom gives me another look, one saying “if only you hadn’t broken your lunch thermos in the second grade, none of this would be happening.” But she stayed.

  And we sweated. It was really hot out here on this concrete, a situation made even worse by all of us having to lug around over-stuffed carry-ons and other bits of business that we didn’t want baggage handlers handling. And the humidity? Ugh. (It does not yet dawn on me that if the humidity is bad now, wait until we’re in the middle of the damn ocean.)

  Tiffany catches my eye. “It’s the middle of October. I shouldn’t  be this moist in October. Do something to rectify the situation immediately.”

  “There she is!”

  All of us turn toward the latest disgorging bus, and yep, it’s Launa, trudging our way. We whoop and holler with far more exuberance than one normally expects when simply successfully exiting a bus. She looks at us and our obnoxiousness with slight suspicion, as if contemplating strolling right past as if she’s never seen us before in her life. (And I believe she even glances at Terry, Darrin and Tara with a “you couldn’t wait two seconds for me to fetch my bag of snacky peanuts out of the car?” Hmmpff.)

  Anyway, we are once again a complete unit, and we head toward what looks like the official entrance to the building. As we near, a woman sporting a Carnival outfit feels it necessary to entice travelers inside. “Come on in! It’s air-conditioned!”)

  What, does she think she’s working at a movie theater in the 1940’s?

  We stumble into the welcoming area, and notice two things. One, Home Girl at the door was right, it’s definitely air-conditioned up in here, with chilled air gushing about in a manner that is almost erotic after the heat outside. And two, there’s a serious amount of people milling about. My normal aversion to crowds awakens in my brain, stretching and yawning and hinting that things are about to get a little uncomfortable.

  We wander around a corner, following vague signs, and enter another, much larger room, and the aversion beast in my head fully awakens. There are people everywhere, jostling to get into one of several lines that lead to Carnival people checking boarding passes and identification. Beyond the checkers, there’s a twisting mess of people and baggage getting screened at 20 or so units.

  The scene you encounter when you arrive at a busy airport during peak times, and the mass of people waiting at security is overwhelming? Multiply that by a factor of five. Stir in a sizeable amount of people who think that shoving and cutting you off is perfectly acceptable behavior. And top it all with the anxiety of not being convinced that things are going to be okay with me not having a passport.

  I sigh for about the fortieth time that day.

  But we get in line. What else can you do but endure? Lo and behold, it’s not very long before there’s a general realignment of the crowd, and Terry and I notice that the lines are uneven, with one of them now being very short. (People just don’t pay attention, one of the founding principles of getting ahead in society. Take advantage of it when you can.) We dash to that line, and it’s our turn very quickly.

  We start shoving things at the woman, but all she really wants right now is a photo ID of some kind and a boarding pass. This is just the initial screening. The fun stuff comes later. We query her about my situation. What do I do if I don’t have an actual passport?

  She pauses only briefly, then primly smiles. “You’ll have to talk to the people upstairs.”

  The people upstairs? That sounds like a Wes Craven movie or something you overhear at a Baptist Revival when the offering plate comes back empty. I don’t want to talk to people upstairs, that sounds unpleasant and East Berlin-ish.

  “How do I get upstairs?”

  “Oh, you have to go through security like everybody else. They’ll look at your paperwork when you try to check in.”

  Notice her sly use of the word “try”.

  Great. So I have to claw my way through all of this mess, and I still may not be getting on the boat. Depends on the people upstairs. Yay.

  We march past Photo-ID Patty and approach one of the screeners. It’s just like the airport, you have to pile things in bins and make sure there’s not anything overly-metal on your body, like intense jewelry or Kitchen-Aid appliances. I hoist one carry-on onto the conveyor belt, and it is quickly whisked into the little tunnel. I take my laptop bag off my shoulder, and I’ve barely set it down when the belt stops moving and a hand appears on my bag. I look up to see a security person.

  “I need you to take everything out of this bag.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. Now.”

  What the hell?


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