Cruising Epidemic

We're baaaaack!  We had a super, fantastic time on our Hawaii cruise these past couple weeks, and we arrived back in Smootville a little after midnight last night.

There are all sorts of things I hope to blog about regarding our trip since we saw many spectacular things along the way.  I am compelled, however, to start by discussing a terribly disturbing trend we noticed on the cruise.

First off, I must point out that we were easily the youngest people on the ship, by a long shot.  The next closest person to us in age was, I'm guessing, somewhere in their 90s.  So there were definitely some generational differences between us and the Hoveround crowd.

But imagine this scenario:  You get up in the morning, and you and your spouse get dressed in separate rooms of the house.  You meet at the door as you're about to leave to go somewhere together, and you realize -- EEEEP! -- we are wearing identical matching outfits!

Clearly, normal human beings would look at each other for a split second, share a hearty laugh, and then SPRINT back to their rooms to change into something that didn't match, right?  But this is not what happened on our ship.

No, it seemed that a startling number of people actually planned this sort of thing, with extreme flare at that, and they were parading themselves around the ship in a way that seemed to strongly suggest that they were doing this with no sense of irony or humor at all.  The first time I noticed this phenomenon I said to Mrs. Smoot, "Do you see that?  You know what that is?  It's a blog entry waiting to happen!"

These are people who obviously woke up in the morning and one of them said to the other, "Honey, how about we go with the obnoxious flower outfit today," or, "Dear, I think we should both dress up as cafe awnings."  Or, "Sweetheart, give me 10 minutes and I'll fashion these drapes into outfits."  And for some vastly inexplicable reason, they both thought it was the right thing to do.

I apologize for the terribly out-of-focus cell phone picture I posted, but I knew that you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it for yourselves.  I have several other pictures of other similar couples, but I thought it was priceless that I was able to get two of these couples to POSE in this manner.  Don't even ask what I used as an excuse for taking their picture.  Suffice it to say that it's probably blurry because I was giggling while taking it.

Anyway, I would strongly suggest that we watch this disturbing trend (at a distance, preferably), and report future instances to Homeland Security if necessary.