Senior Cruisers

     Wendy and I got on the elevator as it stopped at our eighth floor aboard the jumbo Holland America cruise ship Rotterdam while we were cruising the Caribbean last month. As we got on, an older gentleman got off. We joined another cruising couple also descending to a lower floor with us.

    The woman asked her male companion about the gentleman who just got off on eight: “Didn't he want the sixth floor?”

    “He pressed the button for six,” her companion replied.

    “Poor guy,” the woman lamented.

    Cruises like this one test the mental faculties of older cruisers like ourselves. And the Holland-America caters to senior cruisers. Another time we got onto the elevator on the third floor, headed for the twelfth floor. There was only one other gentleman on our elevator and we noticed the only lighted button was for the first floor.

    “Did you know this elevator is going up?” we asked. He confessed that he didn't at the time he boarded but noted, “That's okay. I'll just ride it up. These elevators are fast. ” True, but they also stop. And sometimes quite often like this one did. After it stopped a couple times going up, adding more passengers, the gentleman decided to bail out. Another poor fellow caught up in the complexities of elevator travel.

    Then I saw one lady take out her room key card and show it to a ship's officer, confused as to why she couldn't find her room C3. The officer said that was her muster station, where her lifeboat was located at in case of an emergency. I'm not sure how the woman found her room though. It's not listed on the key card. Then we encountered another woman hurrying to catch up to a member of the room-cleaning staff. “Hello there,” she called. “Can you let me into my room? I locked myself out again.”

    Situations like this can make a senior cantankerous. And we saw a few of them too. An older fellow who had taken a shore excursion with a group of fellow passengers including us got off the bus, then he spotted this young Asian fellow relaxing as he sat on the cement next to a warehouse that housed duty free shops.

“Do you work for Holland America?” the old man asked him rather harshly. The man shook his head, puzzled, but before he could say anything, the older fellow brusquely waved him off and walked on. I could see the confusion mirrored in the young man's expression as he wondered what all that was about.

    Of course, seniors do have a sense of humor too. Aboard another tour bus, we hadn't even left the port for our excursion when a fellow passenger who put on his seat belt found that it would not unfasten. He tried unsuccessfully to wrestle with it, as did his fellow 'blokes' as he called them (I assume he was from Australia). Finally he sent his wife to get the tour guide. She returned with him but he couldn't get the seat belt unfastened either.

    The wife and guide then went to get the bus driver. He returned and also tinkered with the buckle while the wife watched from a distance, looking rather stressed, both at the time it was taking from our tour as well as the attention this all was getting from the other passengers on the bus. Finally, the bus driver using a tool he carried was able to jimmy the seat belt loose.

    After he was free and the bus driver returned to his post, the wife came down the aisle and asked her husband, “What did he say?”

    Her husband who kept his composure as well as his sense of humor throughout responded, “He said you should sit here.”