Cruising, Grandmothers, and Vibrators

As long time readers of Living in Kellie’s World are well aware, Kellie loves taking cruises. We normally go alone, but during our last voyage over the New Year holiday, we invited family and friends to accompany us. In all, our group totaled 16 people and included our mothers. To take advantage of every available discount and credit offered by the cruise line, Kellie assigned us to staterooms in a manner that would produce the greatest cost savings. Consequently, our reservations had me sharing a stateroom with my mother and Kellie was listed as sharing a stateroom with her mom. This arrangement would obviously deprive me of one of the prime benefits of taking Kellie on vacation, so once we were aboard, Kellie went to the purser's office to switch room assignments while I began settling into the cabin that had I assumed would be ours. But I was wrong, as usual, and had to gather the few things I had unpacked to switch rooms with our mothers who were in the adjacent cabin.

After getting everyone in the correct staterooms, our group slowly gathered in the Wheelhouse Bar for drinks. Kellie and I, along with our mothers, were the first to arrive. The moms were trying to tell us about a strange device they found in the night stand that they assumed was left behind by a previous passenger. At first we couldn’t quite understand what they were trying to convey, but once my mother mentioned that the object was in a little pouch that looked like roll of LifeSavers candy, everything suddenly became very clear. I had left a marital aid in our mothers’ stateroom. 

It's hard to describe the feeling one gets when one realizes that their mother has been handling their sex toy. Panic set in. I turned to look at Kellie but she wouldn’t even turn her head in my direction. I knew I was in trouble. Our mothers continued their discussion of the vibrator, speculating about who might have left it behind. Kellie’s mom was surprised by the small size of the device. She thought they were bigger. (Really? I thought size didn’t matter.) My mother then rationalized that the small ones were probably for beginners. Kellie sat there in silence and horror while I nearly fell to the floor laughing.

As the members of our party slow drifted into the bar, our mothers repeated the story of their discovery. Kellie lips pursed tighter with each retelling and I was beginning to fear that this story was not going to die quickly.

Suddenly, I realized that I still had a key to our mothers’ stateroom. I feigned an urgent need for a restroom and sprinted away to recover the item. When I reached the room, the door was open and the steward was making up beds. The toy, still in its LifeSaver pouch, sat humming away on top of the nightstand. Evidently, the moms had removed the device from its container for inspection, turned it on and didn’t know how to turn it off. I’m surprised that they handled it. Did they not realize how and where those things are typically used? I hope they washed their hands before going to the bar. I grabbed the device, thrust it into my back pocket and departed. 

You have to wonder what the steward thought of our family. Think about the situation from his perspective. He enters the stateroom of a pair of elderly women and discovers a vibrator buzzing away right next to the bed. A few minutes later, one of the moms’ children enters the room and walks off with said vibrator. It might explain why the steward was never very cordial. Word got back to us that he referred to our group as, “That family!”

Successfully recovering the device didn’t quell the discussion regarding our mislaid marital aid. Our moms could now regale us with the tale of the vanishing vibrator.

Kellie was not very happy about the whole affair, especially since this was the third time that I've lost control of the vibrator. She’s even less happy about this post since, till now, our mothers did not realize that the marital aid belonged to us. As always, whenever I screw something up, Kellie bans me from that activity in the future, which is why I can no longer hold the passports, drive in foreign countries, or carry the vibrator.