Mediterranean Cruise, Log One: Seasick

In 1975, a Greek cruise line decided to tap the pockets of the middle class people in the United States and Canada, by offering them affordable cruises.

The initial cruise covered the western half of the Mediterranean Sea, beginning in Malaga, Spain and ending in Palma, Majorca.

The first night, we sailed down to Casablanca in Morocco on a choppy Atlantic sea, making the ship roll back and forth for hours.

I woke up sometime in the night feeling myself slipping down the berth until my feet hit the foot-board, then sliding back up until my head hit the headboard, wondering if this was okay.

In the morning, I felt really weird, and I saw outside in the corridors, cardboard boxes, resembling French fry buckets, placed near the walls every ten feet. I had no idea what they were for. If I had, I'd have taken about six of them with me.

In the dining room, my friends insisted that I eat breakfast in spite of my green face and sick eyes.

The very smell of food was disgusting, so they poured me cornflakes in a bowl and topped them with milk. I barely got a spoonful to my mouth.

"Goat's milk!" I cried, and made a mad dash for the hall.

I stumbled along like a maniac, yelling, "Where's a washroom? I need a washroom! Help!"

I ended up using a giant floor ashtray in a card lounge, listening to the tsking of several elderly ladies watching my humiliation across the room.

"You shouldn't go on a cruise if you get seasick," they kept muttering in disgust.

How did I know I'd get seasick? And why didn't those fry buckets come with a sign?

I spent the entire morning sleeping it off on a deck chair, and getting a lovely tan doing it.

At noon, I was dragged into a lounge and ordered to put on a life preserver and listen to the drone of the drill man.

I couldn't even think straight yet, so I had the life preserver on upside-down and backwards, and when the drill man (in a foul mood) saw me, he said worse things than the elderly ladies did in the card lounge.

"Somebody help this ridiculous girl," he growled, then stormed from the lounge, probably to dose himself with a few dozen drinks.

I know if I'd been him, I'd probably have thrown me overboard, miserable life jacket and all.