My sister and I share a love of cruising. We’ve been great travel partners throughout our lives. She knows my angularities and I know hers, so we rarely run into trouble when stuffed into a cabin the size of a cat kennel.

We both are eavesdroppers and people watchers (although in general, we’d rather be left alone since we don’t mix well with half of America these days). We are so grateful and at ease on board when great scenery is rolling by — or when someone serves a meal the size of a brontosaurus — that we are dumbfounded to find that others are having a miserable experience.

Following are scraps of one conversation overheard. It is one couple with one helluva lot of issues.

The Mrs. and The Mr. after a server has offered to bring her a free drink: “I guess we just have to get used to coffee, lemonade, or iced tea.”

(I wonder what other kind of free drink the poor thing has in mind … hemlock maybe? A cup of rue?)

Turning her attention to the daily schedule of events, she mutters to The Mr.: “What time’s the talk on wildlife slaughter?”

The Mr. after viewing the dessert spread: “I don’t want anything if it isn’t lemon meringue.”

A harried server finds him such an item from the recesses of the ship.

The Mr. says: “What’d you do? Have it sent up on the dumbwaiter?”

The Mrs.: “We’ve had two dumb waiters already today!”

The couple laughs. The server leaves.

It appears to me that some people revert to babies at the drop of a diaper. Their parents do everything for them, and they still cry. For many, there’s never enough. Somehow, these two self-serving folks managed to find each other in life.

People, the old world is splitting apart in case you haven’t noticed. Cruise crews don’t consist of slaves anymore. Nobody says “aargh!” or suffers from scurvy. The food they serve isn’t gross just because it isn’t what you’re used to at the Belly Up Buffet.

Don’t take a cruise today looking to be treated like royalty. All the crew — and most of the passengers — will want you deposed by walking the plank, or better yet, a good keel hauling on the schedule for tomorrow afternoon.

Linda B. Myers is a founding member of Olympic Peninsula Authors. Her novels are available at Pacific Mist in Sequim, Port Book and News in Port Angeles, and on Amazon.com. Contact her at myerslindab@gmail.com.