Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Blue Kid on the MS Pride of America Cruise Ship Spring Break 2011

I stared at the blue kid with dread.
My blue slime was four times darker
than the slime being poured by Scuba or Goldfish.
My grandmother's voice rang soundly in the back of my head,
"Haste makes waste."
It wasn't so much that I'd been in a hurry
making my slime for Slime Time Live
on the pool deck as just plain excitement.
I did pay attention as Goldfish showed me
how to fill my bucket with water
and add the cornstarch
and blue food coloring;
I just thought it would look cooler dark blue
so I added a bit more.
Well, the snag with food coloring is that it is
easily absorbed into the skin.
I knew that from a lifetime of dying Easter eggs
in my sloppy, excited manner.
What didn't occur to me was that I could potentially
end up with a blue kid.
Running poolside games with the other youth staff
was one of the most exciting parts of my job.
They had live music rocking oldies from
my teen years and it was near-impossible not to dance.
The Pride of America cruise ship job
was the best job I ever had,
except for the chronic seasickness.
There was an hour at the start of every program
where the kids had free time to choose
from dozens of different games.
I loved playing Candy Land with the tiny tots
and Jenga or Uno with older kids,
but nothing compared to those outside pool games!
We ran all kinds of funny trivia games for families
and the Slime Time Live was usually just two kid teams of four.
We had already done the poopy diaper eating contest,
which was really chocolate pudding in a Huggy eaten
with their hands behind their backs;
and we had done the trivia section with tri-boards.
So the winners were standing in a small inflatable wading pool,
and we were pouring blue slime over their heads
as their parents snapped away with their cameras,
and I was thinking my kid was far too blue!
Thank God the kid and his parents thought it was funny
and that after the poolside shower he was pale blue.
I really liked that job and didn't want to get sent home
before my contract ended in two weeks.
When I got to work for the evening shift
and took a good look at my kid,
you could barely tell he was blue.
He shouted, "Lollipop! Lollipop! Look at me!
I'm blue!" I looked at him and so did my supervisor
Goldfish. She just rolled her eyes.

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