Lost at Sea -

When it comes to my family there's a few things that scare me to death. One of these is whom my four daughters marry. I don’t worry too much about my son, I know it happens both ways, but most of the time any type of abuse or neglect is from the husband to his wife or children. That’s a cheery way to start a story! Another thing is if my wife were to pass away and leave me taking care of my girls – she already says I treat them like truck drivers (I don’t know what that means). The last, for this story is if something were to happen to one of the kids. My wife is always telling me we need to do more big things as a family, what she means by big things usually means something that cost a lot of money. At least that is the first thing that comes to my cheap mind. Paul, I think we need too.. Ch’ing- $. Paul, I want us too.. Ch’ing- $. This isn’t fair because she is wonderful with finances and takes care of the house and our lives on less than we earn. The bigger problem is she is hardly ever wrong. On one such occasion I let my guard down, opened the bank and took our family on a cruise. Now if I was going to be miserable I needed company. So I convinced four of our closest friends to bring their family and come along. One of those families convinced some other people to come which we didn’t know. So because I had a week moment there were more than thirty people putting their financial futures at risk. The cruise ship that we went on was huge. They had a skating rink, miniature golf (I was the ships champion – not just our group the whole ship), rock climbing wall, full basketball court (I took second in lighting – the ship was swaying and some guy that normally couldn’t make a basket swayed the same way. I know he was part of our group.), and water volleyball (we took last in that contest). You can eat anytime you want, and you need to plan on gaining ten pound per cruise. If you only gain eight then the early morning walks around the deck paid off. The cruise we chose traveled to the Western Caribbean, which if you haven’t been is the first location to start cruising. In Grand Cayman we swam and held the sting rays, they’re huge and would suck squid out of your hands. My son scratched his back after having touched squid and a sting ray swam on his back and gave him a hicky. I don’t think he knew what a hicky was and if he did it wasn’t the way he wanted to get one. We climbed a waterfall in Jamaica – which we learned later was man made. Oh-well it was beautiful and great for the kids. In any long cruise there is at least a day that you’re only at sea. With so much to do on the boat it’s great to just hang-out and relax. On the 13^th deck – there was a kiddy pool and other attractions and that became our home base. As we were enjoying our time, it came to our attention that our five year old daughter was missing. At first we were slightly concerned, but there were a lot in our group and maybe she was playing with some of their kids. As we started to look, all were accounted for except our five year old. Our slight concern turned to mild as thirty people fanned the 13^th deck looking for a blond ponytail. I consider myself a very religious man as I also drew on a higher power to help in the search. What was just a few moments’ evolved into an extreme concern and what seemed like an eternity. Despite safety precautions there is only a rail that keeps an individual from falling thirteen floors to the ocean below, there is the possibility of a deranged individual taking a child or just the possibility of a lost child wondering in a panic looking for her parents. This search continued for appositely ten to fifteen minutes at the most. The usually mild mannered wreck that I am became a frenzied idiot running the decks of the ship. As I rounded a corner approximately fifty yards away was a child walking toward me eating a cookie twice the size of her hands. She had wondered down to the far end of the ship and taken the elevator to the fifth floor bakery to secure an afternoon treat. She was lost to everyone but herself. She knew exactly where and why she was going and how to get back when she was done. All of the sudden it didn’t matter how much the cruise had cost or what tropical locations we had seen; I embraced my little girl and told her how much I loved her. Then I gave her the business for going by her self. As I pick her up and to take her to her mom, I even considered taking back the fact that I had grounded her for the rest of her life.