Okay, you self-important weasels, listen up, because I'm only going to type this once: If I find out you've ignored the brief lifeboat lineup, I'll personally hunt you down, tie you into a genuine Abandon Ship Vest from the Navy or Coast Guard, and yank those crotch straps so tight you'll have lumps in your throat. I will drag you, squealing in a very high pitch, by your ankles, head banging kaTHUMP with each step, up or down as many sets of stairs as separate your cabin from the boat deck, and discuss the importance of federally mandated activities that are designed TO SAVE YOUR WORTHLESS LIFE.
You cannot practice staying alive too often. You cannot ignore the importance of showing darling little Lyzzbethhe how to wear her vest and do what the crew tells her to when the ship hits the span and seawater is spraying out of the crack in the elevator doors and you're in Vista Spa getting hot rocks spread on your back (of all the idiotic, self-indulgent, worthless "treatments"). Little Lyzzbethhe deserves to grow up, even without mother who knows she's too important to follow rules.
I have been through a lot more abandon-ship drills than the few the cruise industry has invited me to. I take each of them seriously. In 1971 I sat at a picnic table with a guy who described being on the Coast Guard's largest class of cutter, which name I've forgotten, in the Bering Sea -- after it had struck a rock. (Who would think the Coast Guard would hit a rock? But it wasn't charted.) You've seen Deadliest Catch, you know what the seas can be like with hurricane-force winds driving sprindrift so cold and hard that it flashes to ice when it hits the steel railings and plastic life-raft tubs. Whole compartments -- and part of the engine room -- were flooded, with shocking-cold water surging from port to starbord while crewmen in dungarees tried to wedge timbers and plywood and mattresses against the ripped steel plates.
With shoulders slumped, he told us about the months of nightmares, about the times he'd break into a sweat, his heart racing, when he heard a dumpster being dropped by a garbage truck, or some other daily bang or squeal. Half the crew was hoisted from the ship for their own safety as it crawled for days through frigid seas towards a lee shore and eventually a cove where they could run it onto the beach if the flooding worsened. Several guys were later admitted to psych wards at Public Health Service and Navy hospitals. I guess they're as okay as most of the soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. And they were alive because they trained and drilled and followed the instructions of their officers.
So I learned to take seriously those drills on my small cutter, the Resolute. And I participate alertly on cruises. And I tell Lyzzbethhe's sweet mommie to shut her pie hole and stow her cell phone and listen up because I don't want her distracting deserving people from knowing how to keep themselves alive in an emergency.
Make all the cracks you want while standing with your back to the bulkhead on the Promenade Deck, but when that guy with a Day-Glo vest starts talking through a little bullhorn, listen like you'll have to recite it at the Oscars. And if you can't keep Lyzzbethhe from whining about missing her nap, I'll be happy to help you.
