Where Have All the Paid Dancers Gone?

 If she asked me once, she asked me a million times.
  
"Will there be paid dancers?"

"Paid dancers?"   I asked brows furrowed with confusion.  "Pray tell.  What is a paid dancer?"

"On some cruise lines, they have people who are paid to dance with all the single ladies."

"All the single ladies?"

Here is my 5 second mental side trip.  Except, in my brain I could 

only sing "All the single ladies!  All the single ladies!" 

because those are the only words I can ever remember.

And, I mentally added The Meems as one of Beyonce's "paid dancers."

The question of paid dancers came up even before we booked our cruise, and, every week during the six months until the cruise.

"Will you ask the travel lady if they have paid dancers on that ship?"

"Yes, I will ask the travel lady if there are paid dancers on that ship."

Truth be told, I had my fingers crossed behind my back.

"Nope.  The travel lady said there are no paid dancers."

I may have made a little catty remark about how all the paid dancers went down with the Titanic.  Yep.  They danced right there beside that stringed quartet until the ship went down in the drink.  I may have also used the word "gigolo."

"Hmm.  They used to have paid dancers on cruise lines because so many widows like to go on cruises."

"That must have been so nice for all those widows to have dance partners."

"You didn't have to be a widow.  Just a woman traveling without a man."

"Good to know.   I sure wouldn't have wanted to pose as a widow to dance with a paid dancer."

"Well."

That's all.  Just "Well."  "Well" and "Hmm" are Meems' signals that either she doesn't agree  with your opinion or has nothing further to say on the matter.

Like in the children's book Are You My Mother? in which the little baby bird asks everyone he meets the same question - "Are you my mother?"  "Are you my mother?"  "Are you my mother?"  "Are you my mother? -  my mother asked every human she encountered from waitresses at her retirement home to the lady at the Naturalizer store in the mall.

"Do you know of any cruise lines that have paid dancers?"

"Uh, no ma'am."

"Well."

In the case of the lady at the Naturalizer store -

"Do you sell any shoes that are good for dancing?"

My boys got a big kick out of the thought of Meems dancing with a paid dancer.  Bryce kept egging her on.  

"Hey, Meems, are they going to have any paid dancers on that cruise?"

I glared viciously.

"They say they don't have any paid dancers any more.  They used to.  But, not any more."

"Dang!  That's a bummer!  You'd think that they'd have paid dancers!"

"Well."

Once we boarded the Allure of the Seas, Meems continued her quest for the right answer asking everyone in her path about possibility of paid dancers.  (Travel agents simply can't know ev-er-y-thing, you know.)  Most of them looked past her to give me a sweet, sympathetic smile.  In hindsight, I should have slipped a bus boy in the main dining hall a twenty...

Well.

A Teaser for My Next Blog Post:  Meems and "When is Singles Happy Hour?" 

[Shoot me now.]