Traveling with Your Wife!

What is it with women and suit cases? Recently my wife and I readied for a seven day cruise to the Mexican riviera. If you have never cruised before, imagine three thousand passengers forming a line for embarkation that must pass through customs, around corners, up gang planks, elevators and narrow hall ways, all with luggage in tow. Today's luggage is more accommodating than it use to be. They have wheels that make it easy to tow leaving you a hand free for tickets, passports and a carry on. My wife wouldn't have a hand free if she were an octopus. How do you move thirteen suit cases and twenty four carry ons through an embarkation maze with only two hands? It isn't as though we have never cruised before. We know the routine. This is an annual adventure. I believe women travel this way intentionally. How else can you command the attention of three thousand people for thirty minutes without taking your clothes off?

This fiasco doesn't just happen accidentally. It is carefully planned. The luggage is layed out upon the bed for three days. She doesn't just choose an outfit for each day and throw it in the suitcase. She considers an outfit for every weather event that has ever taken place on the face of the earth and extras, just in case someone else has anything that resembles what she might be wearing. She packs a contingency outfit for every possibility. She has an outfit for emergency evacuations, and one that can be spotted by aircraft should the ship get lost! She has an outfit that is shark repellent and another for being rescued. She has shoes for walking, running, dancing, eating, lounging and tai chi! If she wore all the accessories she packed at one time, she would look like the lighting of the national christmas tree. Watching her pack is like watching a squirrel ready for winter. The Red Cross doesn't pack this much in response to anything! Honestly, seven days isn't a long time when you consider ninety per cent of your time is spent in bed or in a lounge chair. I mean, how dressed up do you need to be for a lounge chair?

The cabins on a cruise ship are comfortable, but they are small. They afford average people ample space for personals and clothing. My wife is not average and by the time she unpacks it is painfully obvious that we will need to make concessions for sleeping. Sex is totally out of the question because the room will only accomodate one at a time.

I know that cosmetics and make up are important to women. I know that what she brings will allow me little room for my own things, but, the bathrooms on ship are large enough to do what one is suppose to do in a bathroom. Ours looked like the grand opening for "Loreal" and what your supposed to do in there is the only thing you couldn't do. When she was through unpacking, both closets and all the drawers were occupied. My clothing, which I concluded must be optional, was consigned to a suitcase for the remainder of the cruise. The benefit, I suppose, was that I had seven days to cruise and she of course, needed three to pack everything up for debarkation. Whatever time she had for cruising, after unpacking and packing, was spent on deck looking like the Queen of Sheba. The formal nights were a testament to her planning, as every eye was turned upon her royal entry, or, they may well have been upon the wrinkled vagrant that followed in her steps. Her majesty was impeccable, while I, unshaven, unkempt, disheveled, odorous and constipated after seven days without a bathroom, found solitude in my seven day outfit, with fifteen hundred other husbands who looked just like me.