"Just look like you have Dementia," I explained. "It'll be easy for you.
Dedra looked like she would cry.
"Listen," I pressed, "if you act like you know what you're doing everyone will think you know what you're doing."
"Huh," she signed.
"Follow us," Sarah said.
"This isn't going to work," Dedra protested.
Sarah grabbed one arm and I grabbed the other and pulled her along.
"I'm not supposed to leave the boat until 9:45," she said.
It was ten-minutes-to-eight. Sarah and I had carried our luggage on. It was a four day cruise and the weather was eighty degrees. How many clothes do you need?
If you're Dedra ... or Johnny O ... you pack enough to dress all of southern Africa.
Johnny O had four costume changes every day (and everything was pressed ...even his underwear! Who presses their underwear?)
Dedra was afraid to open her suitcase because it looked as though it would explode at any moment anyway ... so she mostly watched Horton Hears a Who on her stateroom television set.
(Though we did teach her how to drink, gamble, pick up married Irish guys and get a tattoo!)
Now it was time to disembark and Sarah and I were in the very first wave to be set free from Adult-Camp-at-Sea. I'm not certain why. Our cabin was in bottom of the boat. We could look out of our porthole and see fish.
Cheryl and Jodee were on top and were released next. Then came Johnny O and Judy O. Dedra was the last to be go.
"To hell with that," I told her.
So Dedra came down looking like Eeyore from Winnie the Poo saying, "This will never work. I'm not supposed to leave until 9:45."
"Right," Sarah and I said at the same time as we pulled her along.
At checkpoint number one, Sarah went first explaining, "She's with us. She has Dementia."
"Just give me her card," the bored woman said as she checked people off the boat.
On the gangplank, Dedra was ecstatic.
At customs, Sarah and I breezed right through but Dedra was detained. Her big ass suitcase was on another side of the room sitting on two tables by itself. The legs on both tables were buckling.
"You can't come this way," the customs agent said, holding Dedra back. "Go back out the door you came in and go in the one beside it and get your back."
Dedra looked like she had Dementia.
She always overacts.
So Sarah and I cleared customs and Dedra went backwards. Outside, we waited.
And waited ...
and waited ...
Then Dedra came out dragging her big ass bag.
She started crying. "You waited!" she exclaimed.
"Stop acting," I ordered. "You're off the boat."
Tear streamed down her face.
"I don't think she's acting," Sarah said.
It took all three of us to get her suitcase in the back of the van. Then it took another ten minutes to get the front wheels back down on the pavement.
Dedra cried the whole time.
Sarah and I looked at each other with concern.
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! I'm free at last!"
Dedra had suddenly discovered the Civil Rights movement.
The ride home was uneventful.
"You do know," I said at one point.
"That you told me so?"
"Yep."
"Yep," she sighed.
