A Series Of Unfortunate Events

I can tell that some people, such as my younger sister Dina, are a little envious about all the traveling Kellie and I do.  Dina tries valiantly to mask her emotions, but my sister’s words betray her true feelings. I can’t tell you exactly what she said since those of you who are not acclimated to the idiosyncrasies of her speech might misinterpret her meaning.  For instance, when she says, “f#ck off and get a job,” that’s actually a sibling term of endearment in Dina speak.

Other people think that cruising the oceans of the world is all just fun and games, music and dancing, eating and drinking, when in reality, vacationing, especially aboard ship, is an extremely risky and hazardous endeavor.  Why just the other day, while playing shuffleboard topside, I slid on some wine that Kellie spilled on the court. My pina colada went flying, I banged my knee on the deck, and fell into a split. I can’t do a split, so it brought a tear to my eye. 

Then, one day, while we were sitting on our stateroom balcony, a knock at the door announced that the food Kellie ordered from room service had arrived. We had just finished lunch so I was surprised that Kellie was still hungry. I got up to retrieve her snack, but when I opened the door to our stateroom, it immediately created a wind tunnel effect as air from the passageway blew through our room and out the balcony door that Kellie had left open. Items from the delivery tray immediately took flight. The gale wind caught the closet door and swung it into the wine goblets, shattering them and spraying shards of glass throughout our room.  We thought we cleaned it all up but we must have missed a few fragments. When I sat on the couch after showering, but before getting dressed, I was harpooned by an overlooked remnant of glass.  Kellie needed a pair of tweezers to remove the nasty little sliver from my ass.

But those two small mishaps were minor compared to my latest accident. I was just about to get back into the hot tub after gathering the sunglasses Kellie annoyingly forgot, when I slipped on the wet deck next to the hot tub.  I hit the floor quite hard, landing on my right hip and elbow; it knocked the wind right out of me.  Stunned, I didn’t move for a few seconds.  Then, I sat there for a few minutes wincing in pain. No one from the ship’s crew saw the fall, but those in the hot tub, including Kellie, gasped. Kellie noticed blood dripping from my elbow and we went back to our cabin to assess the damage. The cut was deep, not the worst that I’ve sustained, but the gash was right on the tip of my elbow and I knew that it would not stay closed unless sewn shut.  The doctor in the ship’s infirmary came to the same conclusion I had. I left with two stitches and a lump nearly the size of a base ball.

Later, as I was resting back in our room, a thought occurred to me.  A common thread connected each mishap that befell me.  It was Kellie who had been begging me all cruise to play shuffleboard, it was Kellie who ordered room service and sent me to the door to accept it, and it was Kellie who sent me from the hot tub to fetch her sunglasses.  Is cruising really this dangerous or could my wife be trying to do away with me? It would not be the first time that a wife dispatched her husband during a vacation, although it is normally the husband that does the dispatching. What reason could Kellie possibly have for wanting me out of the picture? I have no clue.