Cruise Ship Party Life (Creative Nonfiction in The Ink Well Prompt #63)

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"Who is ready to play our NOT SO NEWLYWED GAME tonight?" Marco, the cruise entertainment director, called to the crowd. A roar of enthusiasm went up as feet were stomped and hands clapped.

"The first couple we're looking for is the ones who have been married the longest. Anyone out there been married for 40 years?"

There were at least 4 responses so Marco called for 50-year marriages. A couple more replies prompted him to ask for 60 years.

"We've been married 70 years!" shouted a man from midway up the left side.

"Wow! 70 years! Amazing, give these folks a hand and get them down here!" Marco instructed the audience.

The wife was visibly reluctant to participate but audience enthusiasm cajoled them down to the stage. The next set of contestants was gleaned from the crowd by asking who were the most recent newlyweds. A couple from Canada were on their honeymoon and had only been married for 11 days. That left the middle couple to be chosen.

"OK folks, we have our oldest and our newest couples. To fill the third couple seats, everyone else who'd like to participate, come on down!"

"Let's go" said my husband and he grabbed my hand and started pulling us toward the stage.

"Hey, wait, I don't want to do this!" I tried protesting. But to no avail as I soon found myself on stage with about 10 other couples.

"Now here's the deal" explained Marco. "We only have room for 1 more couple so there's going to be a challenge, and you, the audience, will vote by applause to see who wins!"

Marco turned to us and lined up the couples across the stage. "Now here's the challenge. I want to see your most passionate, your most risque, your most outrageous KISS! GO GO GO!"

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Somehow we ended up on the floor with one of my shoes knocked off! The crowd loved it. When the voting by applause was completed, we were the hands-down winner of the third set of seats.

The game started with the men being led off-stage to a soundproof room and the women were left to answer the first round of questions. At the end of the first round, Vic and I were leading, having answered two of three questions correctly.

Then it was the ladies' turn to leave the stage and the men were tasked with guessing our responses. At one point we ladies were able to hear a roar of laughter from the crowd outside but were not able to make out words, only that something outrageous had happened.

I found out what was so funny when the men's second question was asked of us.

"Ladies, here's the situation. Your luggage missed the cruise ship departure and you won't get it until we make our first port. You send your husband to the boutique to buy you a bra. I asked him to describe this purchase for us. First - what color would it be? Second - using numbers from 1 to 100 and letters from A to Z - what size would it be?"

My heart sank as I heard the question, knowing Vic would have NO CLUE for this answer. And I was right, he didn't. He was unfortunate enough to be asked to give his answer first so he didn't even have the benefit of seeing what the other men might say.

His reponse was "I'm going to say Blue, because that's her favorite color. And the size, hmmmm, 7 E."

This was where the crowd had gone wild laughing at him.

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Obviously, we got that answer wrong. However, we did get the other two questions right and were declared the winners of the game.

And our prize was a bottle of champagne to share with our friends. What we didn't realize until later was that the entire show had been videotaped live. And it was shown in its entirety on the ship's TV channel every day for the remaining 10 days of the cruise. We were FAMOUS! Every day people would come up to us, know our names, and comment (usually on my bra size!).

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