Gregg's Summer Vacation

I was talking to Gregg, one of my fifth grade students, and I asked him what he had done over the summer. He told me that he went on a cruise to Alaska.

I want to begin by saying that I am happy for Gregg. His parents have a lot of money and spend it on incredibly wonderful extravaganzas, such as a cruise to Alaska for the whole family. However, I sense a discrepancy in how we would have "viewed" this excursion.

I asked him how it was. He went on and on about airplane flights, snow mobiles, hiking on glaciers, blue ice, and majestic mountains.

However, he is a slender fifth grade boy and I wanted to hear something about the food on a cruise ship. I have heard they have twenty-four hour a day food service. Buffet tables that overflow at breakfast: waffles, blueberry pancakes, eggs Benedict, biscuits and gravy, sausage, bacon, ham, omelettes, every type of juice imaginable, fruit compotes, and pastries made by some fellow in the bowels of the ship who should be made Captain of the World. Lunch buffets that spill onto $600.00 a square yard carpet becuase they are overloaded with Ruebens, chicken, shrimp, catfish, and lobster po' boys, bar-b-qued everything, grilled everything, burgers, onion rings, french fires, sandwiches you never dreamt of, cakes, cookies, pies, and ice creams from around the world. At dinner you have to eat because it's the best meal of all: lobster, shrimp, prime rib, steaks, Chicken Molecka, caviar, oysters Rockfeller, fried chicken, fried shrimp, fried mushrooms, puff pastry, every variety of cheesecake ever imagined including Caramel Dark Chocolate Macadamia Turtle Sexual Orgasm Nirvana Cheesecake, and you "finish up" with ambrosia, and mana.

I asked little skinny Gregg what he ate while he was on the cruise ship.

"Well, Mr. R., I ate noodles. They had these noodles that were good."

"Noodles? You ate noodles?"

"Yeah. They were good! I ate noodles. I ate 'em fried and boiled and I ate noodles the whole trip."

Fifth grade boys!!