Ship to Shore (9-13-07)

I always thought “ship to shore” had something to do with phones. Like you’re on the ship and you call someone on the shore. Even I could understand that. Simple. You don’t need to be a Mensa member to get it. (By the way, a few years back I tried to join Mensa, but they said I didn’t have what most of their members had in their IQ scores. Three digits. I responded with one digit.)

Anyway, I discovered a new meaning to “ship to shore” last year while taking a cruise. Yes, while you were working your buttooskies off to feed your sniveling offspring and ungrateful spouses and you were getting up early to go to work and fight traffic and fight halitosis and contribute something relatively positive to society, I was on a cruise ship. What can I tell you? I also own an SUV and I smoke. And you thought George Bush had a low popularity rating. I’d kill for his numbers.

This was my fourth cruise. And in all the other cruises something would always happen. And that something would be that they would have to take some old fat guy off the ship with a heart problem. It was like a damn clock. One time they had to come for some poor hump on a helicopter. They hauled his ass off and we all watched from the Promenade
Deck. It was kind of a nice break from our usual promenading without anything to see.

Another time we were in port where some native people of indistinguishable heritage were dancing or jumping or having seizures, and they hauled another old fat guy off on a stretcher. I felt bad for him, too. But mostly I felt I’m glad it’s him and not me. Mother Teresa, eat your heart out.

And the other time they came for the HHH – the Hapless Heart Hump -- with this pissy little boat called a tender and they get this latest old fat guy and they are trying to take him down the gangplank from the ship to the tender and the waves are waving and the boats are rocking and the poor sumbitch has this look on his face like “I spent 6,000 bucks for this.” It was pitiful.

Well, gangplankers and gangplankettes, you guessed it. It was your lovable, lanky, column-writing, cigar-smoking, Dodge Durango-driving, red-meat-eating buddy who would be the latest old fat guy hump sumbitch. Yes, it was my turn in the barrel. And many people were rooting for the barrel.

So how did I become this HHH? Well, it all started at dinner. Oh, and it was my birthday, too. So it was my birthday dinner I guess. (Maybe Mensa will reconsider.) We were down in the beautiful, luxurious main dining room called Bowels Revenge where we were eating our usual five course meals. An appetizer and four entrees. I pulled the waiter over and said, “I’m not bloated. Who is responsible, dammit? And everything was going fine and then my buddy, Vic Vieira, started giving me birthday pirate toasts. And we were drinking some 18 year-old scotch (instead of chasing 18-year old women) and yes, we maybe had a few too many. Or, if you were Ted Kennedy, maybe we didn’t.

Every two minutes Vic would stand up and hold his left hand over one eye and say something with a pirate accent, “Let’s drink to our favorite fat ass, Jim Larnis, or Jim Loonis, or whatever the hell that lanky peg-legged loser’s name is.” He would raise his glass, and continue, “We drink to friendship and yardarm-ass is our friend and he’s on a ship so that’s gotta be friendship, get it, Matee.” It was quite eloquent. And he’d bribe the bartender-guy to give me doubles. And geez, I may have had, oh, five or six of the suckers. And we had a little celebration champaigne and some roast beef and baked potatos with sour cream and chives and onions and bacon and butter and someone’s martini olives. It was so much food we could barely eat our ice cream sundaes. And alas, I was kind of feeling a bit heart-humpish even then. Go figure.

So we finished dinner and we were heading back to our room and I said quietly to myself, “This would be a nice night for a little vagina.” But because I stutter, God heard it a little differently and he gave me a little angina.” Hey, I forgive him. I kind of slurred my request. And between the slurring and the stuttering, hell, you gotta cut God a little slack. But somewhere there’s a guy expecting a heart attack who got lucky.

Actually, it wasn’t even angina. It was just some other heart-related, life-threatening, Gods-a-kidder, ventricular tachycardia stuff. At least that’s what the African Bush ship doctor told me. He said if my heart monitor reading got any higher they would need taller nurses to read it. (I did learn later that I had an EKG of 272 which didn’t mean much to me until I saw Tony Soprano get a reading of 242 on HBO. The wimp.)

Well, the bottom line, is that, yes, I was the poor sumbitch old fat guy hump who got hauled off the ship. They put me on a stretcher and took me down the gangplank to the waiting ambulance. And as I looked up to the Promenade Deck I saw some future heart humps up there and I waved a brave wave and one of them hollered down, “You’re interrupting our mid-afternoon-after-lunch-before dinner buffet, asshole.”

Ah, the memories.