Brennies

I've taken to mentally handing out awards to passengers who I think have done something particularly noteworthy or kind. This can be for anything as simple as holding a door open for an elderly person to dressing up their infant in a captain's costume (which I think everyone with an infant on a cruise ship should do). I refer to these as Brennies, and in my mind, the award ceremony is simple and tasteful with the winners allowed ample time to give their acceptance speeches. Last week I only gave out one Brennie, although I suspect there was a lot of shameless campaigning. We had just gotten back from St. Maarten and were eating ice cream by the gangway when we witnessed a nine year-old girl crying by the bathrooms. An older woman in a black tank top and thick New York accent swooped in and quickly took charge. She comforted the girl, found out which ship she was on, determined the last sighting of the girl's parents, marshaled someone over to said location of last sighting, and then distracted the girl by complimenting her on her braids. The whole thing was handled efficiently and positively and I quickly nominated and awarded her a Brennie. The girl's family turned out to be in the rest rooms and were soon retrieved. When they were all reunited the Brennie winner didn't make any value statements about leaving your emotionally fragile daughter unattended in a foreign country, but simply made sure everything was okay and discreetly walked away.

Beth and I watched the reunion for a few minutes (we still had to finish our ice cream so it wasn't like we were stalking them or anything), but it rapidly became uncomfortable. The mother (who kind of looked like a 1985 version of my Aunt Kathy if that helps you) clasped the daughter to her bosom and they locked in together for a few minutes. The daughter was still crying and the mother was dramatically stroking her hair, her eyes closed as if your daughter forgetting that you had told her to wait outside the bathroom was too intense a human tragedy to witness. The rest of the family stood around looking at them awkwardly, all of them clearly viewing this as a well-worn routine on the little girl's part. The older sister was around twelve, wore a lot of bright blue eye shadow, and had the hardened look of someone whose busy schedule of sneaking cigarettes with members of the reggae band was being interrupted. The older brother just looked sad that he was missing a week of lacrosse practice. But like last week's winner, the Brennies don't make value judgments about who gets helped, they just recognize good deeds done out of a good heart.