LITMIR.BIZ

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I couldn’t waste any more time dawdling over my e-mails. It was almost ten o’clock. Time for my first class of the cruise.

      I have to confess I was a tad nervous.

      When I’d first asked Paige how many people I could expect at my class, she’d replied:

      “Oh, the big-name celebrities can attract hundreds. But someone of your caliber”—and there was no doubt she ranked me somewhere in the Three Stooges caliber of lecturer—“the most you can expect is fifty, maybe seventy-five.”

      Seventy-five people?? Gaack! To me that was a cast of thousands. The only other writing class I’d ever taught was at the Shalom Retirement Home, where I could count my students on the fingers of one and a half hands.

      So it was with butterflies frolicking in my stomach that I raced back to my cabin to gather the seventy-five handouts I’d xeroxed for the class. Just my luck, the elevator took forever to show up, and when it finally did, it stopped at every floor.

      Which meant that I was five minutes late when I finally came puffing up to the Galley Grill Restaurant, where the class was scheduled to take place. By now, those butterflies in my stomach were doing the conga.

      My fear quickly turned to flop sweat when I walked into the restaurant.

      There, seated at the tables that had been set up for the class, was a grand total of five students!

      Five measly people? What happened to all the others?

      I walked over to them, a sickly smile pasted on my face.

      “Hello, there!” I said, my voice echoing in the cavernous restaurant. “Welcome to Writing Your Life Story.”

      I prayed some latecomers would straggle in. Maybe some of them got held up in the elevator, like I did. Yes, I had to think positive thoughts. A whole bunch of them would probably come streaming in any minute now.

      I introduced myself, and after explaining that I was no relation to the Pride and Prejudice Jane, I started passing out my handouts: a series of memory-stimulating questions about my students’ childhoods, their jobs, their marriages, their children—in short, their lives.

      If completed, I told them, the questionnaire would serve as a memoir to pass on to future generations. Or it could serve as a springboard to a longer, more ambitious project. All the while I chatted, I kept looking at the door hoping for somebody else to wander in. But alas, it looked like it was just me and my gang of five.

      “So,” I said, my smile now frozen in place, “why don’t you all take turns and state your name and tell everybody why you decided to take this course.

      “You, sir?” I asked a bushy-bearded guy with an opulent unibrow.

      “I’m Max,” he said. “Actually, I wanted to take Professor Heinmann’s lecture series on his Arctic explorations, but, unfortunately, he had to cancel his cruise, so the class was called off.”

      So that’s why Paige had offered me the job. I was a last-minute replacement.

      “And bingo was too crowded,” he added, “so I wandered in here.”

      Great. Nothing like an enthusiastic student to get the ball rolling.

      “I’m Rita,” piped up the woman sitting next to him, a wiry-haired dame with small, squinchy eyes. “I’m president of the West Secaucus Women’s Reading Club, and I never miss an opportunity to hear an author speak.”

      Okay, at least this one had a vague interest in writing.

      “On my last cruise,” she announced proudly, “I saw Mary Higgins Clark.”

      “Really?” I said. “That must’ve been fun.”

      “Yes, she was fabulous. Just fabulous. Utterly spellbinding.”

      “Looks like I’ve got a tough act to follow. Haha.”

      “Humpph,” she sniffed, clamping her arms over her chest, having clearly reached the conclusion that it would be a cold day in hell before I came close to filling Mary H. Clark’s shoes.

      “And what about you?” I asked a long-haired teenage boy, sitting at a table some distance away from the others. He couldn’t hear my question, though, thanks to a pair of earbuds stuffed in his ears. Totally oblivious, he nodded his head in time to music from his iPod.

      “Young man!” I screeched.

      “Who? Me?” he asked, popping out an earbud and peering at me through his fringe of bangs.

      “Yes. What’s your name?”

      “Kenny.”

      I couldn’t help wondering what a kid his age was doing in a class like this.

      “Well, Kenny. Tell everybody why you’re taking this class.”

      “My parents made me. They want you to help me with my book report on The Scarlet Letter.”

      Oh, for heaven’s sake. First Samoa, and now this. It seemed like everyone on board had something for me to edit.

      “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. This is a memoir-writing class. Feel free to drop out if you want.”

      I hated to lose him, but I was not about to play High School English Teacher.

      “Nah,” he said, “that’s okay. There’s nothing else to do on this dumb ship. Everybody here is like a hundred years old. Besides, my parents are paying me fifty bucks if I stay out of their hair for an hour.”

      I nodded wearily to my last two students, a sixty-something couple, dressed in identical jogging suits—his blue, hers pink.

      “We’re David and Nancy Shaw from Seattle,” the man said.

      “And after forty years of marriage we’re taking this cruise to renew our wedding vows,” his wife chimed in.

      Eyeing their matching jogging suits, wide, toothy grins, and Early Beatle bobs, I wondered if they’d always looked like each other, or if they were one of those couples who grew alike as the years went by.

      “Anyhow,” David said, “we thought it would be a wonderful idea to write down our memories to pass down to our children.”

      Alert the media! At last I had some people who actually wanted to write their memoirs.

      “That’s wonderful,” I said, fighting the impulse to race over and kiss them.

      I spent the next few minutes giving my students a mini-lecture on the principles of writing, trotting out the old “Show, Don’t Tell” adage, urging them to go for specific memories rather than sweeping generalities.

      “Just remember,” I said, winding up my little chat, “what you write doesn’t have to be perfect. Just keep writing. If you have difficulty, pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend. Now let’s get started. Everybody take out your pads.”

      “I don’t have a pad,” Kenny, my teen angel, sulked.

      “I don’t either,” Max chimed in.

      “I do,” Rita said, with a virtuous sniff. “I always come prepared.”

      “You can write on the back of these,” I said, tossing Max and Kenny some of my extra handouts.

      Then, just as I was about to give them their first writing exercise, a tiny, white-haired woman drifted into the room. In her hands she carried a tote bag almost as big as she was.

      “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said in a whispery voice.

      “That’s perfectly all right,” I said, grateful for another mate on my motley crew. “What’s your name?”

      “I’m Amanda.”

      “Take a seat, Amanda. Here’s a handout. We’re just about to get started.”

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