In the night, the rolling sound I identified as my tube of lip balm traveling back and forth across the tiny desk in my cabin. Then it dropped to the floor and continued its travel there with longer trips back forth over the floor. It was after midnight because midnight is when I crawled into bed. Crawled isn’t quite the right word for my ungraceful climb into the upper bunk. I more closely resembled an earthquake victim struggling from the rubble until I gratefully flung myself flat on the bed. It was a scene from any Lucy movie (Lucille Ball for you younger readers; google her).
There was more clattering in the night, making various scrapes and clinks as objects moved and collided, punctuated by items falling to the floor. It was like robotic mice were at work in my cabin.
I didn’t care, not a bit. The only sound that would move me from that bunk was the ship’s alarm (tested earlier with passengers forewarned) and, even then, I would question if it really was that serious. I was wiped out. Thirty years of anticipation leading me to this first night in my bunk on a Hurtigrutin ferry was exhausting. If the ship was sinking, I would get a few more winks in until the cold water reached my bunk.
I had set my travel alarm and there was no place to put it within arm’s reach, even at a stretch. I would have to get out of the bunk to turn it off. A big mistake or a sure-fire way to wake up depending on how you look at it.
At 6 a.m. (breakfast was at 7) the alarm beeped with the same urgency of a morning in real life (waking up in my apartment to go to work); like Pavlov’s dog, I was conditioned to stop the beeping at all cost.
I had enough sense not to bump my head on the low ceiling, but I had to twist around to get the front end of my body to the ladder which was at the foot of the bunk, kind of like reversing position in a closed casket.
The floor didn’t look so very far away and, thinking like a fourteen-year-old, I calculated that I could put one foot on the middle rung of the ladder and swing the other foot to the floor, easy.
I can’t explain exactly what I did because I don’t know what I did; my foot hit the polished hardwood floor and slid out from under me. I can blame it on the heave and ho of the ship. Like a drunk figure-skater, I over-corrected with a pirouette while still gripping the ladder with one hand, finishing with a face plant into the lower bunk bumping my head along the way. A move that earned a judges’ score of 9 out of 10 for execution.
I righted myself, hunched in the lower bunk, and thought about the lesson I had learned: never wear socks when getting out of an upper bunk onto a polished floor on a rocking ship.
The floor was littered with the restless objects of the night and the toiletries that were sitting on the small narrow shelf in the bathroom were tipped over like dominoes. Now I understood why there was a basket in the bathroom. Now I knew what needed to be tied down and what didn’t. And from now on, I will sleep with my alarm clock in the bunk with me.
Journeys 