The Pajama Game is the game we’re in
And we’re proud to be in the Pajama Game
Once a season we turn the upstairs bar on the flagship into a giant slumber party, complete with beds (that are often times much more comfortable than our real ones), and pizza and cookies and other such slumber-party attributes. And we all dress up in pajamas that are usually quite unlike the ones we actually sleep in (I mean the only time I sleep in my flannel pajamas is during the Alaska season, when it somehow manages to be bloody freezing all over the ship no matter what you do with the temperature control) – and we dance.
Give the guests a chance to make complete fools of themselves and it’s surprising how quickly they’ll jump at the chance to be ridiculous.
I wear my hair in ponkers (pig tails for those of you who don’t know fifties slang – though my hair is getting so long now that those pigtails brush my shoulders), wear pjs that are purposely slightly too long for me and carry a teddy bear to the PJ party, all of which has the effect of making me look about 12 years old (maybe 13 in a pinch…a very young 13). My first season on the flagship this led to more people (most old enough to be my grandfather), hitting on me than when I was all dolled up in formal wear. Needless to say this was a bit unnerving.
Thankfully, that was just that one season. Since then the PJ Party has actually continuously been one of the most fun nights on the cruise. Last night was no exception.
Thing is, at something like this, the entertainment team ends up becoming the entertainment. We’re scheduled up there to socialize, but we end up being the ones starting the dancing, and usually continuing it. Since they play mostly 80s music for these things everything is upbeat. When the band kicked into Footloose everyone on the floor both squealed and groaned, because no one can bring themselves to sit down for that song, and dancing to it requires an insane amount of energy (it’s also probably the reason my shin splits are acting up this morning!), by the end of it we were all ready to pass out onto the beds that were set up around the room.
Could have been worse of course, could have been Cotton-Eye Joe, which slaughters everyone who attempts to dance it through to the end. That said they did hit us with Mony Mony shortly after that, which is almost as bad…
It was after eleven (which is late for the guests on this ship) before things started winding down enough for the team to be dismissed, at which point I was pretty much ready to head back to my own cabin, pull the elastics out of my hair and slip into the pajamas that I actually sleep in (the only reason I pack the flannel ones is for the PJ Party), and fall into a – for once – dreamless sleep.
48 more hours…