Jeff and Suzanne go on a Cruise Pt 1

Our first cruise. We’ve been planning this for a while.

On Thursday the 8th, our daughter Rachael picks us up at 8pm. We’re staying at her house in Rochester for the night, and then she’ll drive us to the airport. Rachael and Suzanne immediately launch into a Mother-Daughter gabfest. Halfway to Rochester, Suzanne remembers she has a husband, and that he’s sitting in the backseat. “How’re you doing back there, honey?” she asks. “OK.” I answer. Rachael tells her: “Dad can sit back there and think about stuff”.

I do.
Night passes, and we’re off to the airport at 6am.

We do the curbside check-in thing, and then we’ll fly to Fort Myers in Florida. We’re staying with my mom and her husband for a day and a half, and then we’ll take a puddle-jumper to Miami and get on the ship. We go to our gate at the Rochester airport and run into Jim Terwilliger. Jim and his missus are taking a cruise too after the election. We chat for a while before getting on the plane.

We have to go to Philly first, and then change planes to get to Fort Myers. These planes have this little first-class compartment of 16 seats you have to walk through before you get to the poor people’s section. The line moves slowly because people in front of us are putting their bags away in the overhead bins. There’s this one guy in first class that looks at my cool Hawaiian shirt. He’s wearing a sweater that has this little oak tree embroidered on it, with the legend ‘Oakmont Country Club’. He gives me a look that says: “I get to sit in First Class; you obviously do not”. (Jeff takes out the Minion Time Travel-O-Matic X2000 and presses the activate button. Jeff puts his finger on the little embroidered tree and says: “Hey mister. You got something on your shirt.”

(Guy looks)

*fwap*

Jeff dials the time backwards to two minutes earlier and takes his seat)

We change planes in Philly and eventually take off to Florida. There are 13 planes ahead of us, which delays us for an hour. The stewardesses come by and offer drinks. Only soft drinks; it’s been awhile since I’ve flown, maybe they don’t do cocktails anymore. I ask Suzanne if Fredericks of Hollywood sells stewardess suits. “No. They. Do. Not.” she informs me.

Me =

The captain orders people to shut off all their electronic stuff while taking off and landing. No phones, iPods, laptops, Blackberries. As soon as we land, everybody on the plane except us whips out their cell phone and starts blabbing to somebody. I stay comfortably ensconced in the 1960’s, when everything was normal.

{F L O R I D A}

We get off the plane in Fort Myers. My mom’s really happy to see us. My dad died when I was 14 and my mom remarried a few years later. They have a little house next to one of the ocean going canals. My mom’s husband sort of leans to the Right just a little. He asks me where I get my news. I tell him I read different newspapers, TIME magazine, and I go to cnn.com several times a day. He’s shocked. He tells me I shouldn’t do that. CNN is bad, he explains. All they care about is bashing the Republicans. He only watches one TV station, which is on all the time we’re there. FOX. That’s it. FOX only shows two things: Bill O’Reilly and old westerns. He leans over and tells me they’ve had a letter from some old friends, who’ve finally admitted something. (I’m thinking like, what? Scientology? Moonies? Sex change operation?) He lowers his voice and looks around to spare Suzanne the agony. “They’re card-carrying members of the ACLU”, he says. (Here’s my chance of a lifetime) I hear the tramp of boots in the background, voices singing in solidarity, Rule Britannia crashing and thundering into full volume from the orchestra inside my head.

I pull out my wallet and show him my ACLU membership card.

After 10 minutes of CPR and smelling salts, he’s OK.

I explain that the job of the ACLU is to defend the Bill of Rights, which is certainly something that all Americans should get behind. Some Americans, however, obviously don’t care tuppence about civil liberties. Other people’s civil liberties, anyways.

He tries to get even with me. He makes me watch Bill O’ Reilly. He is completely dumbfounded that I don’t know who Bill O’Reilly is, and have never watched him. He tells me that Bill O’Reilly is the only place where I can get the real unvarnished fair and balanced truth. The American truth. He turns on Bill O’Reilly just as Bill calls some left-wing citizen a nut job. Things are sort of predictable after that.

He gives me a satisfied smile, confident that he’s converted me to the cause.

For some reason, I can’t wait till next morning so we can get on the plane.

Here are a few facts about Florida. Everyone who lives there is 120 years old. If they have any children in Florida, I think they must be 90 when they’re born. That would explain a lot. My mom has a neighbor who has an asphalt driveway. But not an ordinary asphalt driveway! He took a paint roller and painted his whole driveway turquoise blue! Wow! How cool is that? There’s a beauty salon near my mom’s house called ‘Curl up and Dye’! Wow!!!

50 years later, my mother remains convinced she was given the wrong baby at the hospital. This happened all the time back then, or so I’ve been told.

It’s 5am Sunday morning, and we’re off. We board our plane in Cape Coral to fly to Miami, the cruise capitol of the world. The Miami International airport is vast and forbidding. It’s old and dirty, at least the section we’re in. Very squalid and depressing. If you’ve ever been to the Midtown parking garage in Rochester, it’s exactly like that. More people in Miami speak Spanish than English, so everything’s in two languages. Even this early in the morning, all the women I see have on skin-tight Capri pants, bright red glossy lipstick, and stiletto heels. We get some breakfast. All the workers have nametags like ‘Jose’ and ‘Akheem’. I don’t think anyone named ‘Fred’ lives in Miami.

We’re going on Norwegian Cruise Line. We find their desk and check our luggage. Soon it will be time to take the bus to the pier. We get assigned to bus 1, prolly because we’re there so early. We get on board, and the driver takes off. It’s about a half-hour ride to the pier. I feel like I should go ‘Gawrsh!’ and ‘Hyuk-hyuk!’ so people will know we’re really a couple of hayseeds. We get off the bus and the cruise line has everything set up very efficiently. We jump through all the hoops, get our photos taken, sign some more stuff, and it’s finally time to go onboard.