I knew I shouldn’t have tried to get a laugh on the backs of such fine people as Shirley Temple and the Carter women just because they wore frocks and blouses with cute little puffed sleeves. I never should have posted that piece here I realize. But the puffed-sleeved blouse I’d grabbed off the rack and bought without benefit of dressing room-time looked SO silly when I tried it on the night before this little four-day cruise that I sat right down and posted a whole array of smarty-pants remarks, even adding pictures, one of them of the Baby Jesus making that arms-outstretched Son-of-God gesture that means basically “Hey you’re a great crowd, I love ya, I’m here every night.”
I felt instantly remorse, of course I did. And since I seem to have turned into a person who believes not only that our pets can read our minds but that inanimate objects can get their feelings hurt, I began to feel sorry for that little blouse. Which is why I put it on at 5am Thursday thinking, to wear it just for the flight to Tampa and the easy cab ride to the pier where, once cozily aboard ship, I would trade it in for a bathing suit and a nice thick layer of Coppertone.
Ah but fate had other plans because here it is two full days later and I am still wearing the thing. Why? Because after my flight out of Boston was cancelled, the scrabbled-together set of substitute flights set me down on the runway in Tampa with just 23 minutes to spare before that ship was sure-enough leaving. After a series of frantic pleading phone calls to Carnival’s Emergency Hotline both before and during the screech of a high-speed cab ride to the pier I did in fact manage to get aboard in a last-possible-second way.
I did, but my luggage did not. And so here I am on Day Three, in the middle of the ocean, still without my suitcase; still living on borrowed toothpaste in this Whatever Happened to Baby Jane blouse with the little puffed sleeves.
They say God will not be mocked but it looks to me like you'd best leave child stars and the kin of Jimmy Carter the hell alone too.
