If They Ever Put A Bullet Through Your Brain, I'll Complain

I have whopping 380 friends on Facebook. I know for you young turks, that’s nothing. What a laugh! I’ve got over a thousand! But for an old poop like me, 380 are a lot to keep up with. Now, let’s start categorizing them, shall we. About 10 are family – (my parents have Facebook pages. That way, they can feel like they know what’s going on in my life, and I never have to actually talk to them! Just kidding, Mom). About 60 are friends I went to school with. Another 50 or so are former high school students of mine. (It’s quite heart-warming yet disconcerting to get a friend request from someone you last saw when they were a gawky teenager, to find 6 to 10 years later that they’ve matured into a responsible intelligent adult. And then there’s the creepiness factor when they end up being pretty cute too. Not that I’ve noticed.) Close to 50 are university friends (or friends from that era. I spent nearly 6 years in college. And no, I still don’t have a degree. Don’t go there), and another 20 are friends of mine from my theatre days in Albuquerque. That’s a total of 190, or half of my friends. (These numbers are all guesstimates. If you’re a Facebook friend of mine, don’t be wasting your time by looking through my friends list and coming up with alternate figures. I won’t be changing my blog.) The other half, another 190, are people I have met in the past 3 years while sailing the Seven Seas. (I had ventured a guess in a previous blog that 1/3 of my Facebook buddies were from ships. But when I got to thinking about it, I realized it was a higher percentage.) Now, how many of them do I actually keep in touch with? Well, that’s another matter.

I received an email today from a former shipmate Tom (with whom I keep in touch) which got me thinking. (I found out today as well that Tom actually reads this blog, so I decided to give him a shout out. “Hi Tom”. If anyone else reading this wants to get mentioned, just tell me. I have absolutely no integrity. I am a cheap floozy.) He wondered why he wasn’t in contact with more former shipmates. That made me wonder why I wasn’t in contact with more former shipmates. When you board a ship, you instantly make about 200 friends. If you go to the OB your first night, everyone buys you drinks and wants to know about the most intimate details of your life. You work and live with the same people everyday for 3-6 months, and you get to know them really well. You pass people in the halls, whose name you might not know, but you always muster a hearty hello. After all, you’re all in the same boat. Literally. (I swore to God I would never ever never ever use that particular expression. Well…there it is.) Maybe for the first time in your life, you’re meeting people from all over the world: Indonesia, the Philippines, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Russia, Hungary, England, Australia etc... Lots and lots of nations!

But. One can’t afford to get too close. Why? Well, ship friendships are generally instantly made, tremendously intense, and very short-lived. They have to be, by necessity. Your contract is 4 months, so is your roommate’s. But. He’s already halfway through when you arrive. You might meet someone that you have lunch and dinner with every day. You go out in port together. You explore strange new lands and fascinating new cultures, and probably get into a little bit of trouble (I have so many stories about my 37th birthday in Puerto Rico. I unfortunately can only remember half of them. But there’s video!). But. You leave a month after she gets here, and never see her again. Sometimes, you meet someone who normally, you wouldn’t search out as a friend; maybe you have too little in common, or they have a completely different personality, or they are much younger or older. But. Because you live in an atmosphere of constant and sometimes overwhelming camaraderie, everyone becomes your instant best friend. And then they leave to go back to Indonesia or Serbia or Australia, and you have to move on to your next instant best friend. Of course, you might meet up with them again on another contract. Things just usually pick up from whence they left off. And then they go again. Repeat times hundreds and hundreds. It’s actually quite hard on the soul sometimes.

I have met some wonderful, wonderful people on ships. And it would be great to be able to keep in touch with all of them. However it’s simply not practical. I think this contract will be hardest, because I actually have met many kindred spirits. (Joy [Oy] is leaving in about 2 weeks, and I will miss her tremendously – the J-club will be Joy-less!) Some of us are already planning to meet up in the winter, and I will go and visit Jenny (if she lets me in) when I’m in Toronto, and Tom in New York (Tom – the brilliant little shit that he is [and a fine sax player to boot] – is doing a Master’s/PHD at Columbia in some environmental engineering thing - sustainable resources blah blah blah… I hope he has a comfortable couch.) I email probably about 20 ship friends on a semi-regular basis. Which is a lot of people to keep up with. I’m not even sure how I came to choose those particular people. For the most part, I am content to spy on the rest through their Facebook updates, and occasionally look at their newly posted pictures. Visual confirmation that their life’s adventures continue on without me, and mine without them. But. What an adventure it’s turning out to be.