MOS Crew Talent Show
Chair hogs
Very sad but we have some Chair hogs among our crew - But there´s hope for them !
Boatbunny:
Okay, I will admit this because it seems like we are all becoming friends, and I sincerely hope that you will allow me to remain in your circle.
On my last cruise, on the last day, (yes only on the last day), we put our stuff on 2 chairs near the pool and then went into breakfast (we weren't total hogs, we didn't take chairs for our kids too).
We were back at the chair in under an hour. We did this because we had spent the entire week never getting a chair, never mind near the pool, but in any part of the ship where sun light
actually hit the deck. We watched numerous people pile stuff on chairs and never come back at all. So, on the last day we kind of took the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude.
I will tell you that when we were ready to head out for other activities in the early afternoon, we cleared the chairs, returned the towels, and left the chairs wide open to somebody else,
even though we planned on returning later in the afternoon.
Now, I don't want this thread to turn into what constitutes a chair hog (ie: if you leave your chair for less than a half hour, you aren't a chair hog). So, here is my admission:
My name is Michelle, and I was once a chair hog.
I feel better now, I am going to try to go find Captain Speaking and admit my moment of weakness to him, hopefully he will forgive me and allow me to cruise again.
SSOCEO:
Boatbunny - Are you my neighbor? I just went out back and both of my deck chairs have towels on them and they aren't mine....
AngieBaby161:
Upon waking this morning...I opened up the sliding glass door and stepped out hoping to see the docking of our ship as she approached port
(or starboard as the case may be) & my deck chairs were being hogged with some sleezy paperback books (well read mind you) and 50 cent flip flops.....
SSOCEO is that you moving down one now?
SSOCEO:
Angiebaby - it wasn't me - I'm still guarding over my deck chairs waiting for boatbunny to get her towels off of them but she's tooooo busy listening to the band she has playing....
Boatbunny:
Oh my gosh, did I forget my towels for 3 whole days!!?? I am so sorry, I just went into Windjammer to get breakfast and got a little sidetracked!
BTW, snuck back into neighbors yard this morning at 6 am, just got a few cuts from the barbed wire (those little trampolines for kids can really propel you quite far),
and put my towels on the chairs. Screams started around 6:15 am, ambulance showed up at 6:25 am, she was driven away in a straight jacket around 6:45 am.
I was sitting on my chair by 9 am (had to have breakfast first!) and had a very quiet and pleasant day at the pool. Tan is going very well!
NATIONAL CRUISEOGRAPHIC’S CHAIR HOG SAFARI
They are one of cruising’s most elusive, yet dangerous creatures. Evidence of them is rampant on virtually all cruise ships worldwide, and yet verified encounters with the beast itself are rare. Even when one is spotted, or worse, approached, they will fight to the death to avoid being identified. Actual skirmishes with them have led to fisticuffs and ruined vacations. Some believe they don’t really exist…that they are a myth. They are one of tourism’s most mysterious beasts. They are…
Chair Hogs!
National Cruisographic’s Western Caribbean correspondent, Ian Iluvabuffet, went on a ten-month cruisafari in search of this mythical creature. Over the course of his daring pursuit he encountered great dangers that would strike fear into the hearts of the less-stalwart: enormous, balding men in speedos, women in four-inch spike heels staggering blindly behind plates piled three feet high with chocolate-covered strawberries from the midnight buffet, and strange rites-of-passage with names such as “Quest” involving horrifying displays of human undergarments and even body parts. What he found was massive amounts of artifacts, fossils, and angry passengers, but only one, unverified Chair Hog identification – which, tragically, resulted in a bloody nose.
And this wasn’t the only physical injury endured by our intrepid correspondent. In addition to his reshaped proboscis, Ian returned home with a full 14 inches added to his waistline…an ailment that National Cruisographic’s medical specialists say may take up to a year to resolve.
But he did get a nice tan.
Ian’s journey began in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he participated in the ritual known as “embarkation.” This, he came to learn, was a process that could take anywhere from 15 minutes to four hours, depending on the cruise line, the number of passengers, and the amount of smuggled booze being confiscated. Ian quickly learned the secrets of avoiding booze detection, and soon came to actually enjoy the taste of mint-flavored Listerine mixed in with his single-malt Scotch.
Once onboard a targeted ship, Ian would set to the hunt. After the requisite night of partying in the casino (which was necessary to avoid detection), Ian managed to drag himself out of bed by 10:00 am and head to the known feeding grounds of chair hogs – the pool deck. Sure enough, there he would spot plenty of evidence of chair hog activity: rows of pool chairs devoid of human occupation, but peppered with Chair Hog artifacts ranging from John Grisham and Jacqueline Suzanne novels to ripped tuxedo t-shirts to broken flip-flops.
“It was interesting to note,” Ian said, “that the flip-flops were never together – there was always a flip on one chair, and a flop on another.” This observation led our behind-the-scenes experts to spend a full two weeks in a frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful effort to identify which was in fact the flip, and which was the flop. (Half of the team said the right foot is the flip, the other half said the left foot…oh never mind.)
Other evidence of Chair Hog activity included the tying together of multiple pool chairs with various items – towels, robe ties, ladies thong underwear woven into intricate patterns. Over time, Ian learned to spot new and ever more ingenious, and in some cases gruesome, tactics used by the elusive Chair Hogs to mark their territory. Boxes of tampons and condoms were spotted, as well as dirty diapers, fake (presumably) dog poo, even a baby. Alone. Sleeping. Tied to the chair. For hours.
The strangest thing, according to Ian, was that “…you never saw the actual creatures themselves! You saw their territory marked everywhere, but if you turned around, the next time you looked there would be a human in the chair.”
If he asked them if they’d been the ones saving the chair, they always denied it…even if they were reading the John Grisham paperback that had been left on the chair. This led Ian to assume that these novels are entirely interchangeable, so that if you happen to pick one up wherever you are, you can drop right into the middle of the book and know exactly what’s happening. (Further investigation by our team of experts has proven this to be true.)
After many days of this frustrating but fruitless hunt, Ian determined that Chair Hogs are, in fact, a variation of nocturnal. In other words, they are not exactly night-crawling creatures, but they do practice a form of night maneuvers: specifically, they interrupt their nighttime sleep cycle in order to rise before dawn and mark their territory. Then, they emerge from their dens (usually inside cabins) hours later to slip unnoticed into the crowd of regular cruise passengers.
Finally, after weeks with no direct sightings, Ian resolved to catch them in the act. Sadly, this proved to be an impossible task. Ian had spent all these many weeks doing his absolute best to fit in with the indigenous population by following their traditional patterns of behavior, identified as the following: rising at mid-morning, eating breakfast at the buffet, lounging at the pool, accepting the continually-offered foo-foo drinks (it’s considered bad karma in this culture to turn them down), eating a buffet lunch at noon, watching pool-side rituals such as belly-flop and hairy-chest contests, eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, watching a strange custom known as the “art auction” in which passengers are enthusiastically encouraged to pay more and more money for second-rate art, consuming more foo-foo drinks at the pool, eating at Johnny Rockets, going on shore for a little while to buy new, larger clothes for the ever-expanding girth, dressing in too-tight formal attire, eating a six-course dinner in the dining room, watching performers in heavy make-up and colorful, feathered costumes gyrate rhythmically to well-known show tunes, going to the midnight chocolate buffet to engorge on cheesecake and chocolate covered strawberries, inserting massive quantities of money into slot machines while drinking over-priced alcoholic beverages, and finally weaving down the corridor to one’s cabin to pass out in an alcohol-induced stupor.
Ian determined that Chair Hogs are clearly hardy creatures that somehow can do all that, and STILL drag their sorry butts out to the pool before dawn to mark their territory before going back to their own dens for a few more hours of coma.
“There was no way that any normal human can do this,” reports Ian.
Our intrepid correspondent was almost ready to pack it in and carry home all of the cruise-line logo key chains he’d won at the Quest and Trivia contests, when finally his luck changed.
“I’d had a particularly grueling night in the casino,” reports Ian. “It was the blackjack tournament. I’d met some Russian guys who were drinking something called absinthe, and they kept forcing it on me. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor in my cabin, and it was almost noon!”
Realizing that his chances for finding a place to sit at the pool were rapidly disappearing with every passing minute, Ian dashed outside to find that, sure enough, every single pool chair was either occupied by someone sipping a brightly colored drink with an umbrella swizzle stick, or marked by a dizzying array of Chair Hog artifacts.
Desperate, feeling hung-over and needing a foo-foo drink like he’d never needed anything before in his life, Ian made a momentous decision…one that would haunt him for the remainder of his cruise, and that would lead to his one and only unverified encounter with the mysterious, elusive Chair Hog.
He moved a flip. (Or a flop, depending on which team member you ask.)
Ninety minutes later, on his fourth fluorescent, nuclear-waste-colored drink, it happened. Ian recounts the details:
“A large, extremely hairy alpha male in a microscopic yellow Speedo approached me,” Ian said. “I immediately became frightened – his eyes showed rage beyond anything I’d ever seen in the animal kingdom before. His stomach protruded at least four feet ahead of him. I knew that if he sat on me, all would be lost.
“He stormed up to me and yelled, ‘Hey, dude, you’re in my chair!’
“‘Um, no I’m not,’ I replied tentatively. ‘No one was sitting here when I got here an hour and a half ago.’
“‘You’re fulla cr*p! I’ve been in this chair all day!’ he screamed. ‘That’s my sandal on the floor beside you. Get outta my chair, you pansy!’
“All around me, I heard a sound that was unmistakable and chilling: ‘SLUUURP!’ It was the sound of a hundred brain-freeze headaches being created as people sucked down their foo foo drinks in anticipation and excitement. The waiters began scurrying to quickly deliver refills, as the crowd hunkered down for something they seemed to be expecting. It was as if they’d seen this before, and knew what was gonna happen.
“At this point, something I can’t explain came over me. My therapist says that it was due to unresolved anger at my Marine Corp daddy who called me a pansy after I wouldn’t fight back when Merv Zackerman beat the snot out of me in the fifth grade. My wife says I’m just nuts.” [Ian’s wife left him shortly after reports of this incident became public – Editor’s note.]
“Whatever it was, I stood up. ‘Oh, you mean THIS old thing?’ I said, picking up the broken old flip [or flop – Ed.] with two fingers like it was a particularly disgusting specimen of insect.
“Then I did something that to this day I can’t believe. I leaned back, wound up and tossed it as hard as I could. The crowd ooohed like it was a fireworks show on the Fourth of July as the flip [flop! – Ed.] sailed overboard.”
“The place grew silent. A hundred pairs of lips poised over their nuclear drinks. I stood there, breathing heavily, knowing I’d finally done it! I’d stood up for myself! I mean…um…I saw a Chair Hog! A REAL one! And I had witnesses to boot.
“The Chair Hog’s bloodshot eyes bored a hole into me. He started moving. I stood my ground. He marched up to me, his swollen abdomen swaying in front of him. Suddenly the whole world exploded as his fist shot out and slammed me right in the nose. I felt myself being lifted from the pool deck, and the next thing I new, out I went, sailing into the air, and then falling…falling…twelve decks down, following the exact same path as the flip [FLOP! – Ed] before me. And on my way down, just before I hit the warm Caribbean waters with an enormous splash, I heard a piercing noise I will never forget…
“SLUUUURP!”
It only took 45 minutes for Ian Iluvabuffet to be rescued. Sadly, by the time he was hauled back onboard, the Chair Hog had managed to slip back into the passenger population unnoticed.
Investigators after the fact were able to identify a potential suspect based on Ian’s description: a Merv Grazinski from Oklahoma City. But even after repeated interrogations, Mr. Grazinksi denied that he was, in fact, a Chair Hog. He did acknowledge witnessing the incident; however, his version of the story differed markedly from Ian’s:
“This ugly dude came staggering out to the pool deck, wearing swim trunks two sizes too small and yanked all the way up to his man-boobs. He was holding onto an empty bottle of absinthe and spouting Russian phrases with a British accent. I was walking back to my chair after swimming 500 laps in the pool – I’m training for a triathlon, ya know – and there he was trying to sit down in my chair! I said, ‘Hey, whattaya doin, dude?’ He asked me what my name was, of all things! When I said, ‘Merv,’ the guy starting shrieking like a girl at a horror flick! The next thing we knew he’d backed right into the railing, and then, still screaming like a banshee, the whacko climbed UP on the railing, and then LAUNCHED himself overboard, screaming ‘I’M NOT A PANSY, DADDY!’ the whole way down.”
The incident is still being investigated.
So, after ten months of searching, tons of all-you-can-eat-buffet food, uncountable foo-foo drinks and literally tens of thousands of dollars poured into the slot machines, the search was over. But were any questions answered? Do Chair Hogs really exist, or are they a figment of the imagination of over-fed and inebriated cruise passengers? Will we ever really know?
Ian thinks so.
In our next installment, Ian attempts to infiltrate the frightening, perilous world of the cruise ship underworld – people who wear jeans in the dining room on formal night.
-- LeeAnne Clark, 2006