Friendships made on cruises fade afterwards

Except for Kevin, who danced up a storm and wanted me to send him the video

By John Toth

The Bulletin

There are a few things that Sharon and I are good at when cruising: We party at night, rest during the day, eat more than we should and meet people.

Cruising is like a floating live-away camp. I spent many summers in camps as a child and then worked in them when I was a teen. At the end of the season, we would promise up and down that we’d stay in touch, call or write, and then we never did.

It’s the same way on a cruise ship. We meet a lot of people, come across them several times during the cruise, eat dinner with them several nights, and then we say we’ll stay in touch. Then we leave the ship and immediately break the promise.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that’s the way it happens. We live our existential cruising lives, then return home to our normal lives, and all those good conversations and good times just fade away. It almost never fails.

Almost never, except for Kevin from New Orleans, who was cruising on the Carnival Dream with his nephew to Key West and the Bahamas.

We met Kevin after we changed our dinner table assignment because the location we had in the Main Dining Room on the first night was not the best. It was noisy; the company was not what we expected; and my chair was right by the door, where the servers went in and out.

We got an alternative location on the second level of the dining room, a booth that was about as private as you can get. I thought this was ideal, except for the fact that it was going to be hard to get into a conversation with anyone. But it was better than being in the middle of traffic at our previous table.

We did manage to get to know the cruisers in the booth behind us, which included a young man from Germany, accompanied by his son and girlfriend from New Braunfels, a German language teacher at a private school.

Kevin and his nephew were sitting at a table for two on the other side.

The German fellow and I got into interesting conversations, since I was also born in Europe and speak mediocre German. I used to speak it better when I lived in Austria for a year and a half as a child.

The private school teacher suggested that we get together for a German meal in New Braunfels sometime, which is a short distance from our place outside of San Antonio. “Great,” I said. “It’s my treat, anywhere you want to eat.” No, no, no, she responded. “I’ll cook for you.” I replied that sounded even better. That hasn’t happened, though. We never got together.

We saw Kevin on the Lido deck at a party where he was dancing up a storm. He was huffing and puffing, but kept on, and he became the main act on the dance floor. A few times he looked like his heart had enough, but he kept on, so I started to video him. The next night at dinner, we struck up a conversation with him, and I showed him the video.

That broke the ice, and Kevin wanted to know how he could get a copy. He gave me his cellphone number, and I sent over the video, but he couldn’t get it until he got off the ship because he didn’t buy the wifi Internet on the ship.

When the music turned on in the dining room, and passengers were encouraged to dance, he was one of the few cruisers who actually did so - and, of course, Sharon, the Bulletin’s Dancing on Cruise Ships editor. We hung out with Kevin on and off after that and became pretty good friends. But as I mentioned earlier, cruising friendships are not made to last past the cruise.

A couple of days after the cruise, Kevin’s text message popped up on my phone. “Thanks. That video is priceless,” he wrote.

He still chimes in every now and then to see what we’re up to and to update us about himself.

We’ll have to get together with him the next time we’re in New Orleans - maybe go somewhere where we can dance up a storm.

(Do you have a cruising story? Send it to john.bulletin@gmail.com.)