Day 6: guess who’s coming to dinner

I was expressing my surprise to Sister that there wasn’t more entertaining stuff to blog about on The Cruise and she was like, are you kidding me? She suggested I start with our dining companions. And she wasn’t referring to my parents, entertaining as they can be. For those unfamiliar with cruising, guests are assigned a table in the main dining room for dinner every night. We have a standing 6pm booking at table 202, with the lovely Nitin as our waiter. Also at our table are a husband and wife, their 8-year-old daughter and, curiously, a female friend. I say curiously because, while the friend seems to belong to the wife, she shares a predilection for eyebrow bar piercings and wild partying with the husband (while the wife stays in the cabin with the daughter). On the first night, the husband and female friend didn’t make it to dinner because they were too busy slamming sambucca shots in a bar until 2 in the morning. The long-suffering wife discovered the friend asleep on the toilet and her husband using the bathroom step as a pillow the next morning. Wild. Sister and I – on the other hand – have not lasted past ooooh, about 9pm, yet. Our parents, however, are partying every night, waving disco glow sticks at Bobby, the cruise director (dressed as the Leatherman from The Village People, I’d been wondering why he looked so seedy at the Easter egg hunt) in the ship’s lobby and tottering to bed at midnight. My mother offered to babysit for Sister and I last night so we could trip the light fantastic and we recoiled in horror. Maybe next week, when we don’t feel so much like we’ve been run over by trucks. Though I wouldn’t mind trying one of those Cocksucking cocktails again sometime. Yumbo columbo.