So despite the fact that the entire episode was both embarrassing and tedious to witness, it was spellbinding and spectacular in its absurdity, which is to say you could likely throw the equivalent of seven tear-gas bombs at it and it would still crawl back to e-mail you another spiteful comment. The Flaming Tantrum of Death raised anger and revenge to a new plateau, and with proper usage, it is something to aspire to, mixing seventh-grade rage with the resilience of Tempur-Pedic technology. In awe of its inspiring power, my friends and I decided to take possession of it and harness it, deliver it from evil and use it only for good, as in terrorizing two damn dirty hippies who deserved to be touched by its terrifying potency.
If you’re wondering what a Flaming Tantrum of Death looks like in its physical form, it very much resembles me abandoning that right-hand turn and furiously flipping my car around to follow a shiny black Jetta and the hippies inside it, who, it was apparent, were laughing, laughing, laughing at Lady Prius until they saw her directly behind them in their rearview mirror and became suddenly still because unfortunately for them, they were stuck at a red light and never once thought that Lady Prius had the ability to terrorize anyone, let alone have the temperament and mean streak of Sonny Corleone, except that I was wearing something more than an undershirt, which, I admit, lessened the Tantrum’s impact substantially.
And because the hippies were so fond of honking, the Flaming Tantrum of Death progressed to its second stage as I laid on my horn, my palm pressed firmly and absolutely into the center of my steering wheel, where I let it trumpet continuously without letting up while I cackled, “Don’t you love it? Don’t you love honking? You’re so good at it, you little honkers! Do you like people honking at you? Do you? How ’bout I honk this horn until I get out of this fussy Prius, come over there and rip the filthy hippie dreadlocks off your head, go home and sand down a dresser with them?” (We all know that I probably wasn’t going to do that because as soon as I got over there, the light would turn green and I’d be standing in an intersection like a lunatic fighting myself, but it sounded so good and quite dramatic, so I had to say it.)
And initially, both the girl and the boy hippie simply sat there dumbfounded as the horn blared until they decided upon their method of retaliation and began moving their arms and torsos from side to side and all around in the weapon of mass destruction known as “interpretive dance.”
They were both dancing, like “Grateful Dead, I just ate a loaded brownie, let’s go feed the homeless and then sit naked in an endangered tree” dancing.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I yelled. “You’re going to DANCE at me? Big horn honkers, ‘What the fu—?’ screamers, brazen tailgaters can only DANCE at me? Well, dance to this, you smelly tofu assholes! You’re wearing a bandana shirt, aren’t you? Dance, hippies, dance!”
And I laid on the horn again and didn’t let up. And I kept it going until the light turned green, they made a right, I made a right, and then they ran the next red trying to get away from me.
I guess they were tired of dancing.
Now, I was fully aware that in the next day’s Eugene newspaper, the front-page headline was most likely to read PRIUS OWNER NEEDS ANGER MANAGEMENT THERAPY AND A HUG, PERHAPS LESS SODIUM, but I could not care less. Maybe it was just about time that a Prius owner went batshit, just to show that it could be done. And so that peace-loving, tree-sitting, college-aged damn dirty hippies would think twice before yelling, “What the fu——?” to a woman in a hybrid, driving the speed limit and trying not to squash a kid or small woodland creature, even if she was getting ninety-nine miles to the gallon while doing it.
And, just for the record, I am still looking for that car. It’s a small enough town. I’ll find it.
I happen to have some fire tantrum left in me to breathe—just enough to make some hippies dance.
Come Sail Away
For a fraction of a second, as the raft teetered over the edge of the thrashing, churning, foaming waters below, I knew that I had made an enormous mistake.
I didn’t have time to do anything—not to look at Jamie, who I hoped was still sitting to my right, not to yell “I hate all of you!” to the rest of the people crammed behind us in the raft, not even to take a breath—before we dove in furiously, meeting a wall of silty, pearly, thirty-three-degree water that rolled over us without a slice of hesitation or mercy.
Somehow I know that when we were sitting in front of Jamie’s computer in her new house in Portland a month prior, neither one of us pictured that in a matter of weeks, we would be clinging to a piece of plywood with frozen fingers, trying not to get thrown overboard to meet our destiny on the tip of a sharp rock. I know for a fact that scenario never crossed our minds as we chose the activities we would pursue during our much anticipated cruise to Alaska.
“For our port of call in Juneau, this excursion has ‘crackers, a gourmet selection of cheeses, artisan sausages, and hot apple cider in the bunkhouse as we conclude our relaxing, hypnotic river journey,’” I remember her reading off the computer screen. “Which do you think sounds better, that one, or the one where we ‘experience the landscape and vistas during a ten-mile bike ride, with a warming treat of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa at the base of the glacier’?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I offered. “I love a solid chocolate chip cookie, but if I’m riding ten miles for a treat, at the end of that road better be the Keebler Forest, where I have an open invitation to gorge on a vast variety of baked goods until my guts explode. And I get to keep an elf.”
“Have you noticed the square footage of our cabin?” Jamie reminded me. “There’s no room for another body, even a rosy, fleshy master crafter of chocolate-covered graham crackers. I don’t care if such artisan is the size of a two-year-old.”
“It is small,” I agreed. “I’ve worn underwear that could fit more people in it. But my sincere hope is that we have so much fun repeatedly pillaging the buffet that we won’t even notice that we’re sharing quarters the size of the brig on the space shuttle.”
And honestly, almost the minute we set foot on that ship, I knew I was right. As soon as we were on the gangway, the element of fun collapsed and rolled over at our feet, eager to please us and fulfill any command that popped into our heads. As we sat at our table in the nearly empty buffet dining room, we marveled over the pristine selection of delicious treats presented for our enjoyment. We were so excited to begin our vacation, we got there early enough to be one of the first people on board and thus among the first beholders of the buffet, which was magnificent and royal in itself. In the dining room we sampled pickings from our plates of bounty—each tastefully heaped with the appropriate amount of salad, delicious salted meats, imported cheeses, and the finest in accoutrements—including fruit, macaroni and cheese, a pancake, some roast beef, a bowl of French onion soup, three kinds of pickles, a cracker assortment, a quail’s egg, a barbeque rib, a chocolate mousse cup, a tandoori chicken leg and an ice cream sundae—as we looked out over the Puget Sound from the dining room window, full of calm, serenity, and wonder.
“At home, we live like peasants,” I announced disgustedly, referring not only to the food bonanza but also to the way that every crew member smiled at us, held doors open, provided us with hand sanitizer, and cheerfully and earnestly asked us how we were every time we saw them. I ripped into the orange flesh of the chicken leg and shoved another pickle into my mouth. “We were made for this kind of life. I already know I never want to get off this ship. Kicking and screaming is the way I bet it will go down. Maybe I’ll just get a job here. I can be the free-ice-cream girl, or the pickle organizer.”
“Mmmmm,” Jamie hummed as she shook her head after a delicate bite of her tiny ham sandwich on a petite baguette. “I’d think about that if I were you. I saw a documentary on the Travel Channel about the real life of cruise ships, and from that angle, it doesn’t look too inviting. The employees live below sea level where there aren’t any windows, and they sleep
in shifts because they are forced to share beds.”
“We had to sleep in bunk beds at Girl Scout camp,” I offered.
“Not quite the same thing as lying in the sweat of Lars, the potato and carrot peeler, and trying to go to sleep on a pillow that’s already been drooled on for eight hours by someone with questionable dental hygiene,” my best friend replied.
“So you’d think,” I volleyed as I chomped on the rib. “But Shari Greene took the top bunk above me and then had a nocturnal accident typically reserved for toddlers, the elderly, and middle-aged homeless men passed out on flattened cardboard boxes behind Popeyes Chicken. There is no badge for that, you know. I had no idea what to do, I was not prepared! I spent the rest of the night huddled in the corner with my mouth closed very tightly. I was almost positive the sun was never going to come up.”
“Wasn’t she the one who told Mrs. Henry’s fourth-grade class that Christmas was a lie because there was no Santa Claus, something that the more sensitive and reality-delayed, especially concerning the existence of fantasy creatures and humanoid characters with magic abilities, students weren’t quite ready to hear?” Jamie asked.
“Didn’t want to talk about it then,” I reminded her as I killed the mousse cup in one big lick. “Don’t want to talk about it now.”
“And wasn’t she the one who was on the same relay team you were an alternate for in our fifth-grade class?” Jamie asked, and she nibbled on a piece of lettuce. “And got so sick right before the race that you got her spot and then won the race for the team?”
“That will teach her to eat a second bean burrito, a taco, and the fiesta pineapple upside-down cake from my lunch after she already scarfed down her own school lunch,” I commented as I grinned. “Oink, oink, little pig! The only thing I regret is that I didn’t make her eat it under a drunk hobo sleeping on a grate.”
“I thought your only regret was lying to God after you knelt down before the race began and promised the Lord that you’d become a nun if you won first place,” Jamie recalled. “Sister Laurie Ann.”
“Intentionally overfeeding the third leg runner with a free second lunch that would obviously lead to extreme gastrointestinal distress was clearly the devil’s work,” I assured her as I finished off my ice cream sundae. “Who wants a nun who at ten was seeking revenge with a weapon of a fiesta pineapple upside-down cake? I bet even Jeffrey Dahmer was nicer on Field Day than I was.”
Just then, we heard a series of three soft chimes from the overhead speaker, accompanied by the voice of Devon, the portly and perky British cruise director who had greeted us when we boarded the ship, letting us know that all of our cabins were ready for occupancy.
Both Jamie and I gasped as we pushed away our lunch dishes and grabbed our purses.
“All I know is that if there are bunk beds in there,” she informed me, “I’m getting the top one after what you just ate. I’m not spending the night huddled in the corner after acid reflux and the sea tag-team you.”
As soon as we opened the door to our cabin, we both saw that Jamie was right: I couldn’t have kept the elf, not even if he fit in a drawer. In fact, our cabin space was so economical that one of us had to step aside if the other one wanted to go anywhere, even to bed. It was so incredibly tiny that no matter where you were in the room, you were touching something. Whether it was my arm, my skull, or the front-runner, my butt, some part of me was constantly touching something.
“Thank God I left my cords at home, “I mentioned. “The drywall would have been sanded down to studs within hours.”
“What’s the deal with the bed?” Jamie asked, nodding her head over to the queen-sized mattress and not the two twins we had requested. “You gotta be kidding me. It’s bad enough that you made me buy all of the exact clothes for this cruise that you bought, but I did not sign up for a ‘together’ vacation. The two ladies next door look like Drew Carey and Ron Reagan, so if there is something you need to tell me, say it now while I can still jump overboard.”
“But I’m a good spooner,” I joked. “Ask anyone I’ve been on vacation with! I promise I reserved a cabin with twin beds. I’ll see if this bed comes apart and you look behind those curtains. Maybe there’s a small sleeping area behind them.”
Jamie swung the draperies open, flooding sunlight into the room as I lifted the comforter to expose two single beds pushed together to form one.
“I didn’t find a bed,” Jamie exclaimed. “But I did find the balcony! It’s almost as big as our room!”
“Yes, and we’ll still have to take turns standing out there,” I commented. “Unless spooning isn’t completely off the table.”
After I called the housekeeping line and asked to have two sets of linens brought up, I fell back on the beds and touched all four walls at the same time with either a foot or a hand.
“What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” I asked Jamie. “We could revisit the glorious buffet, or we could try one of the restaurants onboard.”
“Mmmm, the buffet,” Jamie said as she thought from the balcony. “It was an extraordinary spread of delicacies and fried foods alike. I wouldn’t mind going back there at all.”
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed. “How’s the balcony?”
“Time to rotate,” she said. “I just saw a seagull that looked awfully familiar, and it saw me.”
Just as Jamie and I were engaged in an act of no-contact spooning over the threshold of the balcony as we attempted to change places, there was a knock at the door.
We both paused for several seconds and stood very still.
“Okay, listen,” Jamie finally said. “There is no room in this cabin for regulated personal space, and we are currently in the most challeging Twister position known to man. There’s no way to get out of this clean. Let’s count to three and make a break for it, and I apologize ahead of time for whichever body part I Bad Touch you on.”
“Likewise,” I agreed. “Whichever base we get to, I will not read anything but necessity into it. One, two, three!”
With Jamie flying north and me jumping south, we shot apart like a pair of magnets repelling each other as Jamie bounced off the cabin door and I landed on the balcony.
Jamie opened the door and there stood two young men, one tall and one short, with the smaller one holding some nice, clean, passenger-quality white sheets and the other one carrying two plush, puffy comforters.
“Hello,” the shorter one said with the nice, warm smile we had seen replicated on faces all over the ship, worn by anyone wearing a uniform of any type. “You called to get the bed separated? We are your stewards. I am Ardhi from Indonesia.”
“I am James from Jamaica,” the taller one followed.
Jamie turned and looked on me with a smile that said exactly what I was feeling.
Holy shit, we have servants!!!!
I have never, in all of my experiences on earth, felt more elated.
It was better than turning nine and seeing the hulking silhouette of a wrapped Barbie townhouse next to your birthday cake. It was more incredible than realizing that the guy who just asked you to marry him was no less than 68 percent sober. It was more amazing than not only eating the most delicious and high-fat-content meals of all time and steamrolling on to an equally guilt-infused dessert, but then also not having to work the calories off on the treadmill because you lost them by getting a mixed-cocktail-inspired flu.
“I feel like we’re in a Merchant Ivory movie!” Jamie whispered as she sidled up against the wall to permit our butlers entrance.
“I’m Laurie,” I said as I waved from the balcony. “I’d come closer but I’d be arrested for some garden-variety assault.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Jamie added. “I’m Jamie, and you just saved our friendship.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “The last thing we wanted to do on this ship was share a bed!”
From the doorway of the bathroom, Jamie leaned out and gave me a stern look.
“Don’t,” it
said. “Please don’t. Let me enjoy this for at least a minute more, because I will never be here again. I will never be sitting on a bathroom sink with my feet propped up on the toilet lid watching my butlers change my sheets again. PLEASE.”
But the duration of the silence in our cabin continued for too long as the stewards split the bed apart into two smaller ones and left a cavern of wonder and speculation wide open and ready to be spelunked into. It was like a fluffy, perfect mound of whipped cream just demanding to be demolished. And I was just the one to kick the air out of it.
“Jamie watched a behind-the-scenes show about cruise ships and their working conditions,” I ventured as Jamie rolled her eyes and shook her head at me. “The show reported that cruise ship employees have to share a bed.”
Ardhi and James looked at each other but didn’t stop working. Ardhi smiled at me, then nodded. “Yes, we do,” he confirmed.
“You’re kidding,” I replied. “Even on this ship? I thought it might be true of the Disney cruises, because Disney even makes their characters share underwear and the creepy crawlies, like Pooh Lice, that come with them, but I didn’t think this cruise line would! They make their commercials seem so love-filled and friendly, like a place that would provide a bug-free bed for everybody, or at least a can of personal pesticide!”