We took a lot of family vacations while my brother and I were growing up. Sometimes, these getaways were relatively close to home (such as the one at Golden Acres Farm and Ranch, where my parents received special permission for me to join the hotel day camp’s boys group instead of the girls group because the boys did fun stuff like dodge ball while the girls group took nature walks to pick flowers, and I was too much of a tomboy to do girly stuff), but other trips took us to far-flung Caribbean islands like Curacao and Saint Martin. The best vacations of all though, were the Caribbean cruises we took as teenagers.

Cruises are the perfect family vacation, as you don’t actually have to spend all your time with your family. My parents would wake us up as they were leaving for breakfast, and then we might spot them around the ship during the course of the day. The only meal we shared as a family was dinner, prior to which, we would all squeeze around each other in our miniscule cabin, lining up to use the tiny bathroom and fight over mirror space in order to get ready. After dinner, my brother and I would once again take leave of our parents and run off to find the friends we’d made, usually heading off to the ship’s disco for the rest of the evening, and eventually wandering over to the midnight buffet.

While I certainly enjoyed the various ports of call we visited along the way, the best times were to be had on-board. While memories of the first cruise we took are sketchy, I still have fond memories of the second cruise – taken when I was 17. Our group of new friends included Mexicans, Canadians and Brits, as well as an assortment of Americans. Days on-board were spent together, as well as our one-day docking on the cruise line’s private island. As I mentioned above, evenings were spent in the disco, where I did my best to catch the eye of one of our young British acquaintances. To this day, I still don’t know whether or not I succeeded (I was far too innocent and naive, and needless to say, utterly clueless about things like sending signals and making passes), but David and I remained friends, and managed to keep in touch quite regularly for approximately ten years after that vacation took place, meeting up once in NYC and again in London – no small feat given that this was the pre-email era and my snail mailing skills were questionable at best. We kept in touch during my gap year in Israel (he had spent a year in Israel as well before we met), throughout my years in Boston and during my initial years back in Israel. We exchanged camp stories while I worked at a Jewish camp in NY and he worked at a Jewish camp in Michigan, and we exchanged Israel stories for the duration of our correspondence. The last time I heard from him (at some point after I got married, as I recall), he was very happily living and working in Sydney, Australia, and had married a woman of Dutch-Lebanese descent. Somewhere, I still have all the old letters he sent (as well as nearly all the letters that anyone has ever sent me, including some real winners from a certain friend who reads and comments on this blog quite regularly), and I can even still remember his parents’ address in London (I have a bizarre memory for random tidbits of information and trivia).

For some reason, there’s one song that I always associate with those nights in the ship’s disco. It was probably played at least once every evening, and whenever I hear it, I’m transported back in time, back to that disco. Who’d have guessed that “Tarzan Boy”, by one-hit wonder Baltimora would be the song to evoke these memories of good times with “vacation” friends? Certainly not me, but given that it was the 80s, I suppose anything is possible…

Tarzan Boy
Baltimora

Jungle life
I’m far away from nowhere
On my own like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
I play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon
Jungle life
I’m living in the open
Native beat that carries on
Burning bright
A fire the blows the signal to the sky
I sit and wonder does the message get to you

Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other
chance tonight
Gimme the other, gimme the other
Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other world

Jungle life
You’re far away from nothing
It’s all right
You won’t miss home
Take a chance
Leave everything behind you
Come and join me
Won’t be sorry
It’s easy to survive

Jungle life
We’re living in the open
All alone like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
We play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon

Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other
Chance tonight
Oh Yeah
Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other
Night to night
You won’t play
Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other
Chance tonight
Oh Yeah
Night to night
Night to night
Gimme the other, gimme the other

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