I Was Cool

When I was thirteen, I was cool. Our friend from California showed me how. We walked around with combs in our back pockets and whipped them out to comb our feathered hair at regular intervals. Thing was, I only combed the front. Someone pointed out to me that the back of my hair was pretty messy. That may have put a small dent in my coolness but I adjusted.

We weren’t allowed to run down the alleyways (hallways) on the ship because they were narrow and it wouldn’t go well if someone came out of their cabin or around the corner and we ran into them. So, like any enterprising boys, we came up with an alternative. We started skipping down the alleyways. It wasn’t the most masculine thing but it accomplished the goal. The problem was, we would go faster by skipping than running. Talk about obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit.

If you dove to the bottom of Elefsis Bay where our ship had been anchored you would discover a lot of stuff not natural to the habitat. One of our pastimes became throwing stuff overboard to see how it entered the water. One of the things that gave us the most joy were these small, heavy metal attachments that kept the light covers attached in the alleyways. They would drop fast and make a very cool “thoonk” sound as they entered the water. I’m sure there was a major shortage of those little attachments in the years to come.

But throwing stuff into the water wasn’t limited to just us kids. There were several bronze mermaid statues scattered in various parts of the ship, leftovers from the ship’s former glory. Being mermaids, they weren’t very modest. So, despite the fact that they probably had some value, my father decided that over the side they should go. They made a pretty good splash. There was also a piano that was in bad shape. Someone decided that we needed to tear that apart and send it over as well.

There were a lot of old ration bars that used to be in the lifeboats for emergencies. They didn’t taste all that great but they sure disintegrated into a powder well when you threw them into a wall fan. This became one of our pastimes in an unused cabin up forward, which ended up with piles of the stuff. Someone ended up discovering the cabin but this time we didn’t get caught. Sorry to whomever had to clean that up. It’s a good thing we didn’t find matches on the ship.

My sister decided she wanted to go back to Hawaii to finish high school. The school on board was now going strong with good teachers and schoolrooms back aft (back of the ship). I wasn’t too keen on our physical education options though, since I don’t really like other people touching me. Basketball and wrestling don’t lend themselves well to that aversion. Fortunately, they also decided to do gymnastics, which I enjoyed. 

Another problem with basketball was that the court was on the outside deck. They tried to set up a net to cover the entire court but the ball would inevitably find a hole and end up overboard. To get from the ship to shore or shore to ship we hired a boat and crew for a launch service. When the ball went overboard, we would appeal to the people on the launch to retrieve it for us.

People would sometimes jump overboard to retrieve the basketballs as well despite the polluted water. I overcame my fear of heights by braving the 50-foot-high jump from Lido deck. The practice was eventually banned but finding high places to jump off into water became one of life’s quests and thrills. 

My "feathered hair" stage


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