King Karaoke and the Storm Named Katrina
by Jan Vroegindewey - A Writer from Helium.com

It was to have been our 20th wedding celebration cruise aboard the ship, the Celebration. Headed for Key West, Florida and the Bahamas, the sun and sea promised a good time. Who knew as we boarded the ship that August day in 2005 that, despite the sumptuous midnight feasts, the gorgeous sunsets, and the laughing passengers, a menace named Hurricane Katrina would literally change the ship's course and make a little Karaoke machine in a dimly lit corner of the ship the bright spot of the cruise?

We had set out on a Monday morning, oblivious to weather reports. Kissing our four children goodbye at the Jacksonville port, we boarded the vessel, feeling like young lovers again. Five days of no itineraries, no meetings, and no carpools stretched before us. After finding our cabin and enduring the mandatory lifeboat drill, we began to explore the ship. Though one of the older ships in the cruise line, it offered shops, casinos, spas, and much more. We noted that one of the lounges had a Karaoke machine and decided to check it out later.

That night, after dinner, we strolled about the decks and discovered some courageous passengers attempting to belt out some blues in the Karaoke lounge. A little tipsy, they had trouble keeping time and the lyrics seemed to slur. Somewhere in California, I imagined, the Beach Boys were cringing as the lyrics to "California Girls" were mangled that night. A few amused passengers were the dutiful audience members, but no magic seemed to happen that night around the machine. "Could it be that all the hype about Karaoke was just that - hype - and nothing more", I thought to myself.

The next morning the ship had docked at Key West. As my husband and I walked around the upper decks, we heard the roosters crowing in the sleepy downtown district, announcing another humid morning in Florida's sandy tourist Mecca. After the getting permission to deboard for a five hour port stay, we rented an electric mini car and set out. We explored beaches, visited shell shops, and looked at the beach front architecture. Locals at the tourist shops had their TV stations set to the weather channel and the first talk of "Hurricane Katrina" began to hit our ears. As the port visit came to an end, and hundreds of passengers made their way back to the ship, we noticed the crew members' conversations centered on one thing - Katrina.

That night, the ships' loudspeakers blared the heavy Italian accent of the captain, "We regret to inform you that the Bahamas received fifteen inches of rain today. Our port visit has been canceled." Anger and frustration began to rear their ugly heads among the passengers. Dream vacations were losing their "dreaminess". That night almost no one went to the Karaoke lounge. By the next morning, word came that Key West had received eleven inches of rain overnight. The shops we had laughed in yesterday were now a soggy mess.

The captain continued to give us updates, but there was no sense of "up" in them. Each report seemed graver than the last. The winds were increasing. No ports could accommodate our ship. We would have to zigzag for three more days in the Atlantic while Katrina turned her compass toward New Orleans. Passengers grew more weary, more stir crazy. The ship that had loomed so large in port just forty hours earlier was now growing uncomfortably small.

Families aboard the ship were getting creative in occupy ing their children. Hopscotch across the floor tile patterns, leapfrog on the pool deck, and scavenger hunts all worked for a few minutes, but Katrina had managed to wash over the ship with ominous overtones and the children aboard sensed the adults' distraction. Even though we were hundreds of miles away from the storm, our minds were on one thing - the hurricane.

That night, the deck strolls all seemed to end on the aft decks and the surreal sight of three gigantic waterspouts on the south horizon that were indicators of Katrina's growing strength. Digital cameras on every wrist seemed to appear suddenly to capture the other worldly sight.

Back inside the ship, the crew tried to provide a normal evening of cruise ship entertainment. The Karaoke Lounge was empty except for one very drunken man. His large mustache curled around his lips as he concentrated on the line up of Elvis songs. Then the strangest gathering happened. Children, unable to sleep, and parents, unable to get them asleep, began to drift into the Karaoke area. Within minutes, the empty room was filled with children waiting to be serenaded by the

tipsy Elvis. Karaoke - with its strange unifying charm had triumphed against Katrina - the menace of the seas. As the lyrics to "Love Me Tender" appeared on the screen, the swaggering Elvis looked out on his young - very young - audience and sang them all to sleep.

For one night in August, Karaoke was King.