Dateline: Seattle Hilton Branch Headquarters.    

Reasonable success is to be reported from the behind the lines attempt to approach a new experience with the Thinking Guidance System a bit ahead of Emotional Guidance System.  In other words, in the attempt to let the facts, rather than fears, direct behavior.

How many experiences have we not tried because we’ve made up scary barriers that do not exist?  Scary people who do not exist?  Who among us hasn’t approached an educational experience–like graduate school, for example–sure we are the only moron who slipped through the entrance requirements?  Personally, I always enjoyed the fantasy that brain surgeons were in a whole different category of brilliance from rest of us.  If someone is opening my skull, I wanted to think that person had something the rest of us didn’t….I especially wanted to believe their Emotional Guidance Systems never got the best of them.  Then I had to put out that marriage counselor shingle and shot the dickens out of that little fantasy. Oh well.

The ”Cruise People Fantasy,” is shared with the hope that the next time you are facing a new situation with new people, you can think of the Cruise People Fantasy and relax.

We were planning a cruise to celebrate our tenth anniversary.  That same summer the girls had a favorite retro show called “The Love Boat” featuring a cruise ship on which wonderful little romances happened. One evening we’re watching an episode which involved a gathering around the ship’s pool….and intermittently discussing what little tidbits we might need to add to our wardrobes before launching ourselves into the cruise people jet set.  The characters on the Love Boat were one hundred percent… women in bikinis and stilettos and men mostly preening in deck chairs with fancy cocktails siting on their  rock-hard abdomens.  Everyone had great hair and walked with grace. 

We studied the people around the Love Boat pool and concluded that investing in those expensive bathing suit covers was definitely called for.

Now picture what people on a cruise really look like.  Yep.  You got it.   We’re everyone of us…nuts.  Have a school reunion coming up?  Remember the Cruise People Fantasy and go forth.  And, don’t underestimate the value of a swimsuit cover.