The last time I went on a cruise W's Dad was our President.

As you've read in previous posts, the Cracker family is about to head southward for a Disney cruise with the rest of the extended Cracker clan. As the week goes by, I've gotten more excited about the trip. But, thinking about cruising brings up a fond memory of my first cruise. The year was 1990 and my best girlfriends from high school and I went on a 3 day cruise to Nassau.

We were just 20 years old at the time - just kids really. Check out those sunglasses will ya'? We were all attending different colleges, but had remained close and decided we should go away for a girl's weekend. It was a complete blast. I don't remember all the details (I probably have early onset Alzheimer's), but I do remember laughing a lot.

Oddly one of the only details I do remember isn't even something involving one of my friends. It was the fact that our waiter and our room steward were both named Juan. One was much taller than the other, so we referred to them as Big Juan and Little Juan. They were close to our age, and we had fun joking around with them while we were on the ship. By the end of our journey we just referred to them as a unit, the "Magic Juans."

Speaking of big and little, here are my 2 friends P & T. P is 6'3" tall, and hilarious! She kept us laughing all through high school. She was (and probably still is) an phenomenal basketball player. She played both in high school and college. T is just 4'11" and I've known her since we were in 1st grade together. These days she's a pediatrician & has 3 little kids of her own.

Here are our other 3 cruising partners - R, M and Kelly. R is a big wig muckity muck at a ginormous consumer products company. She's traveled the world, gotten an MBA at Wharton, participated in triathlons and marathons and was recently married. Despite all this, we still really like her. M went to college with me here in Ohio, then went to work for a major insurance company. She still works for them, but now she lives way out in Denver with her husband and 2 girls. Kelly, you may remember from previous posts. Kelly is one of my favorite people on the planet. She's funny and generous and has a beautiful 11 year old daughter who will hopefully babysit my own hooligans someday. She also shares my somewhat warped view of the world which makes me happy.

Looking back at these pictures I remember how fun it was to be 20 and single. I remember how wonderful it was to have such good friends to share fun times with. Lord knows I was not worried about any of them throwing a temper tantrum every evening at dinner. Seriously, there were no tears over the fact that Honey-Nut Cheerios wasn't on the menu. I also didn't have to pack a million books and diversions to avoid meltdowns. I might be digressing a bit here, but my point is I traveled much lighter in those days.

I am lucky to have such good friends and I'm happy to say that I still keep in touch with all of these girls to some degree.

I'm hoping that this week's cruise will be just as much fun as my last one! I'm also hoping I am better able to remember the details once I get home.