Drama on the LOVE BOAT
My mom and dad just returned from a two week Hawaiian Island cruise on a Norwegian cruise ship with my dad's brother, my aunt and four other people. FUN! RIGHT?
So I drive down to Norman last night to see them, eat a much needed home cooked meal, watch trip video footage and collect my booty (souvenirs!). To my surprise, my mom and dad are giving one another the silent treatment and I can feel their bad attitudes in the air like a thick and miserable little rain cloud permeating their house.
UGH. What's worse than making the trip to the parental unit's headquarters and finding them mid-fight? Not a whole lot.
Apparently, after almost 30 years of marriage, they have discovered the following:
A) My mother is a bossy, critical control freak with uptight tendencies (dad's discovery)
B) My dad is impatient, drinks a lot of beer and has a difficult time controlling both his mouth and the volume of his voice (mom's discovery)
Really? It took a cruise through paradise to discover those things? Did they just meet? I guess I wasn't successful with my disclaimers to both of them separately before they left, despite my efforts. They are so predictable.
And they aren't being dramatic about it or anything...Nooooo. I still can't help but laugh. While visiting with my dad in his "corner" of the silent-yet-pissed-off emotional sparring match, he vented to me about mom's nitpicking his every move and obsessing over things from sunscreen down to the socks he wore:
"Are you wearing sunscreen? Where's the sunscreen? Do we need to get more sunscreen? I don't think you put on enough sunscreen...no, don't buy that, we have enough sunscreen on the ship. Why didn't you bring it? You're going to burn. I told you we should have brought it..."
*Yup. That's sounds about right. That's my mother. "Bruce, I want to introduce you to HIROKO...."
Mom recapped to me an incident where dad, my boisterous favorite uncle, Al, and his buddy Gary, were reprimanded on the ship deck one night after too many glasses of wine (Al and Gary) and Guiness beers (dad), for foul language and obnoxiously booming drunken conversation...throwing around "God Damn" this and "God damn" that, flavored with "F Bombs" and SHIT, HELL, etc...only to discover that they had been sitting at a table behind a group full of Catholic priests.
*Yup. That's my dad. "...and Hiroko, meet BRUCE."
I find that particular scenario to be hilarious, but my mom doesn't share our sense of humor.
What in the hell were Catholic priests doing sitting out on a ship deck, in the smoking area, after 1 a.m. with a bunch of Baby Booming men on vacation drinking?
Praying? Give me a break. Middle-aged people need to cut loose and go wild sometimes just as much as anyone else.
While watching an hour's worth of home movie footage (which, with my dad as camera man narrating things with the sarcasm and humor of the master cynical maestro he is, it was quite entertaining), I couldn't even tell they were bumping heads so much.
But when mom handed me an envelope of full of pictures that cruise ships bombard you with around every corner, at the end of every staircase, before, after and during dinner, at port, etc. (!!!!!!), I got my biggest kick of the night.
They only purchased three or four pictures, but the first one of the collection had my brother and I rolling:
You know couples always look so cheesy and almost scarily happy in those professional portrait pictures on cruise ships, right? My parents, in the first formal dinner picture, looked so obviously annoyed and pissed off at the world, with their forced, tight-lipped "smiles" in that moment that I could FEEL their bantering one another with their thoughts.
I know both of the expressions that were on their faces and they are quite frightening...they were wearing the "Stay the FUCK away from me faces" that all parents have when they've HAD IT.
~shudder~
I keep trying to tell them that in a week or two, when they have settled back into their home routines and have cooled off, they will look back at their bickering and laugh. They don't seem to think so, but their stubbornness only makes it funnier to me.
I suggested they frame the picture and put it on their mantle so that after they realize how much time they wasted being pissed off, they might remember the fun stuff they did.
They weren't amused.
It's amazing the kinds of things that you can learn from your parents without them even trying to teach you anything...
