Sea Olympics – October 9

It was a disastrous task, given my little experience and the boat’s rockiness, but on Wednesday night I painted my nails. Not only that…but the 20 guys on my floor also painted their nails. Pink.

As you have probably already guessed, it would require a very special occasion to convince me to be so … girly. And trust me was the occasion special: it was the eve of the Sea Olympics: One Ship, One Dream. I made my bid for captain on the second night of the ship by bribing everybody with cookies (thanks parents, that purchase went to my shipboard account). Little did my floor know that I would inevitably choose pink as our team color. And little did I know that these boys, unlike those from St. Paul’s and SAE that I’m used to, actually do not own a plethora of pink shorts and pink polos. Don’t worry though, because I had enough pink in my wardrobe to supply the entire floor and then some. And then the mighty PINK PANTHERS came out strong.

It was looking all uphill from the start. The Aegean Sea, the smallest of the seas and the only sea on deck 2 (every other deck has four seas – ours is so little because we share most of our deck with the crew quarters) has been undefeated for the past five Sea Olympics. We had a song to the tune of the Pink Panther theme song: We’re gonna win; You’ll see; We’ll gain a victory: Aegean Seaaaaaaaa. And a rally chant that nobody else could compete with: “Where’s it better?” “On the bottom!”

Ah…and the bottom is right. After losing our voices at the Opening Ceremonies, we competed fiercely the next day. I stacked our Tug-o-War team to outweigh any other team on the ship. I sent the girl with glasses to the spelling bee. I paired the Italian roommates on the pizza making contest. And I put myself on flip cup and Pictionary. Basically…we were stacked. There was no way we couldn’t be number one. And yet…our cheer unfortunately came true…

As I used my “pimp cane” (aka – my pink lacrosse shaft) to force my way through the crowds around the volleyball court, another Panther yelled back to me that it was useless, we had already lost. Then came the nightmarish round of Pictionary during which I failed to guess “paste.” And then our spelling bee girl got out in the second round. And our pushup boy collapsed with 15 seconds left (it was probably the pink nails that did him in). And a 65 year old man broke out 24 pull-ups, dominating all the college boys. And the other teams’ wall-sitters lasted for 15 minutes – our 3 minutes there just couldn’t compare. Our pizza was burnt. The jeopardy questions were about classes, not pop-culture. Our hotdog boy, who said he could eat 11 in five minutes only downed 3. And, as it turned out, the wheelbarrow races did have to switch partners. Oh, and equally disadvantaging all: in an effort to conserve water (we’re at sea for a long time), the pool was drained and the synchronize swim teams were forced to perform on a stage rather than in the water.

All in all, it was nightmare after nightmare as we rushed back to the scoreboard only to see another round go through with the Pink Panthers at 0: DFL. In the end, we managed to secure a solid three points: 2 from our Hawaiian hula-hooper and 1 from our human knot team (6 seconds to undo a human knot. Ridiculous).

But that’s okay because we showed up at our closing ceremonies yelling (or, by this point, hoarsely whispering) our favorite chant:

Where’s it better?

On the bottom!

That’s right. We managed to be excited that our ranking matched our cheer. But then came the dreaded announcement…the Pink Panthers were not actually last. We had beaten out the Silver Stars.

Yeah that’s right – we can’t even lose right.