Faux Pas

My friends and family know that I always strike up conversations with strangers in lines. I feel awkward at social events, but put me in line next to people I don't know, and before you know it, I know how long they have been married and how many children they have.

So, Wednesday morning I was standing in line at one of the buffet counters and I hear the woman behind me (or at least I think I hear her) say, “I wish I had brought my glasses. I can't see what it is that they're serving.” The woman with her says, “Well, that bowl has fried squid.” “Yuck,” says the woman with no glasses.

Without a second thought, I turned around with a big smile and said, “See, you really should have brought your glasses, huh?” I'm waiting for her to smile back at me, but instead she looks at me with shock and says, “What glasses?” With a feeling of impending doom, I sense the conversation heading south very quickly. “Ah, well, you said you wish you had brought your glasses. You aren't wearing them and so you almost put squid on your plate. You can't read the signs if you don't have your glasses.” Am I talking too loudly, I wonder?

The woman continues to look at me with something close to horror. “I'm legally blind,” she finally says.

Sweet heavenly Jesus. I sputter my sincere apologies and go flying back to our table. Bill asks me what's wrong. I ask him to let me just wallow in my bottomless embarrassment for a bit. But I guess my embarrassment wasn't bottomless, because a few minutes later Bill assured me that I wouldn't see her ever again, and my response was, “Well, I know she won't see me!” Ar ar ar ar.

I told Bill, that was it; I simply was finished striking up conversations with strangers. As I was saying this, we were heading over to the soft serve machine (which, I'm happy to say, serves delicious low-fat yogurt rather than ice cream; I mean, it practically burns calories as you eat it!) and got behind a man making himself a cone. He made the cone flawlessly, and before I could stop myself, I said, “You work at Dairy Queen, don't you?” He turned to me, gave me a funny look, and left. At least he didn't have any disabilities that I could see. I have begun to realize that I am physically incapable of refraining from conversations with strangers.

The hour change got to us again. We slept until past 9 o'clock. In fact, I might still be sleeping if our stateroom attendant hadn't knocked on our door (apparently to see if we were still breathing). Perhaps that's how I can stay out of trouble – just keep sleeping.

We spent most of the day reading and relaxing. I did watch the salsa class for a bit. There's something just wrong about salsa being taught by a young woman with an Australian accent, but she did a fine job anyway.

Dinner was very good. We decided, as a matter of fact, that we think the food on the Navigator is better than what we had on the Voyager two years ago. But, my God! They are killing us with the cookies. What are you supposed to do when you are wandering around the Royal Promenade and the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies hits your nose and you see a young woman carrying around a tray of cookies? Oh, and you're on a cruise ship where you stop thinking about calories? You eat a fresh cookie three or four times a day. But that's okay. I just go have one of those calorie-burning frozen yogurt cones to offset the caloric intake.

The show last night was ballroom dancing. While the entertainers on the ship are not quite as good as Dancing With the Stars, it was a great show anyway. And we were really grown ups and stayed up for the Adult Comedy Show at 11 p.m. With the time change, that was really midnight. We rolled into bed at 1:30 (taking the time change into consideration). That's later than I've stayed up in years! And, of course we had a fresh chocolate chip cookie on our way up to our stateroom.