random recollection
alex and i only went on one cruise, when we were very young, maybe 6 or 7. it was on the royal caribbean and mostly we went on it because we took along my grandparents and cruises don't demand much in way of athleticism.
my parents and grandparents decided to go to the casino or something, i don't remember. it was something that didn't allow kids. so alex and i got dropped off at daycare. they were supposed to come at 5 PM to pick us up. 5 PM rolled around... no parents. the kids (they looked like college students, in hindsight) who were running the daycare gave us concerned looks and hung around guiltily. after 30 or 40 minutes, alex and i decided to go back to our room, and the college kids, after much concerned questioning, let us go.
i remember this journey, albeit hazily. it was scary. my mom had never been late to get us before, and though we were fairly independent, we were also alone on an enormous, multi-story ship with no one to look after us. i think we may have briefly tried to find our parents, because i have a snapshot memory of the casino carpet and fear, but we soon gave up and went back to look for our room. we finally found our way back to the room, but we hadn't been given keys. we knocked on the door for a long time, but there was no answer. we sat down in the corridor, now thoroughly frightened and feeling very abandoned.
after a while some sort of staff person wandered by. we must have looked like we were in trouble, two upset kids sitting in the hallway outside a door. we told him that this was our room but that we didn't know where our parents were. we may actually have been too young to know our parents' first names in English. he didn't seem to know what to do with us. he asked us several times if we were sure that it was, in fact, our room. we assured him, and so he unlocked the door for us.
i don't know what we did in the room, but we were both too frightened to relax. i know i was imagining that my parents had somehow fallen in the ocean and drowned. alex was even more morbid than i was at that age, so who knows what he was thinking. i get the feeling that we just sat on the bed and waited for our parents to come back. when they finally did, my mom was torn between screaming at us for leaving the daycare unattended and congratulating us on having been mature enough to get back to the room and manage to get inside. we were just happy we weren't orphans. i remember my mom being angry with all kinds of people - the daycare people, my dad, etc. - because we'd been left to wander the hallways alone for over an hour.
we never went on a cruise again, though i don't think it was for this reason.
my parents and grandparents decided to go to the casino or something, i don't remember. it was something that didn't allow kids. so alex and i got dropped off at daycare. they were supposed to come at 5 PM to pick us up. 5 PM rolled around... no parents. the kids (they looked like college students, in hindsight) who were running the daycare gave us concerned looks and hung around guiltily. after 30 or 40 minutes, alex and i decided to go back to our room, and the college kids, after much concerned questioning, let us go.
i remember this journey, albeit hazily. it was scary. my mom had never been late to get us before, and though we were fairly independent, we were also alone on an enormous, multi-story ship with no one to look after us. i think we may have briefly tried to find our parents, because i have a snapshot memory of the casino carpet and fear, but we soon gave up and went back to look for our room. we finally found our way back to the room, but we hadn't been given keys. we knocked on the door for a long time, but there was no answer. we sat down in the corridor, now thoroughly frightened and feeling very abandoned.
after a while some sort of staff person wandered by. we must have looked like we were in trouble, two upset kids sitting in the hallway outside a door. we told him that this was our room but that we didn't know where our parents were. we may actually have been too young to know our parents' first names in English. he didn't seem to know what to do with us. he asked us several times if we were sure that it was, in fact, our room. we assured him, and so he unlocked the door for us.
i don't know what we did in the room, but we were both too frightened to relax. i know i was imagining that my parents had somehow fallen in the ocean and drowned. alex was even more morbid than i was at that age, so who knows what he was thinking. i get the feeling that we just sat on the bed and waited for our parents to come back. when they finally did, my mom was torn between screaming at us for leaving the daycare unattended and congratulating us on having been mature enough to get back to the room and manage to get inside. we were just happy we weren't orphans. i remember my mom being angry with all kinds of people - the daycare people, my dad, etc. - because we'd been left to wander the hallways alone for over an hour.
we never went on a cruise again, though i don't think it was for this reason.