Let’s Blast The Time Capsule!

 Now, during our last sabbatical, we tried to send our niece and nephews a post card from every stop. Mostly. Our way of sharing the world and, hopefully, encouraging them to come see it for themselves one day. We are doing that again this time. So, we’ve already mailed our postcards from Portugal and Spain. Fresh off the tobacco shop in France for stamps, we were ready to send those out. There is a drop box by the front desk that’s marked MAIL. Easy.

Therein began the scene of me cracking up the whole front area of the boat the other day.

I stroll up with the day’s stash of postcards and deftly move to slide them into the mail slot when a ship officer starts walking towards me quickly, “Ma’am! Don’t do that!” Well. Ok. 

He says they don’t use the mail slot. Rather, just hand the postcards to someone at the front desk. I said, “ok, well, When did that change?” He said, “we never use this.” I said, “well, can you get in there and remove all the postcards I’ve already “sent”?” His eyes got large. “One moment, ma’am.”

Strange, I think. 

He comes back with a key. The key does not work.

“The thing is,” he says to me, “We don’t have a key for this.”

Strange, I think.

“No key?”

“No.”

By now, we have a crowd watching. This is making my new friend Ecer from Nicaragua nervous, but I’m good with a crowd.

So I said, “Ecer. When’s the last time there was a key?”

“I don’t have a key.”

“Yes. But, have you ever?”

“No.”

“Ecer!” I screamed. “We have a time capsule here! We must blast this sucker open. There could be historical writings in here! LEtters from the grave! Who knows!”

“Maybe it is just yours, ma’am. No one uses this.”

“Ecer. To be fair. I personally have used it 3 times already. What are the chances not a single other person has?”

Ecer has no words.

At this point, 3 members of the crowd join in the call to bust open the time capsule. One points out to Ecer that if this isn’t a usable mail slot, they could at least tape over it. Or hang a sign. Something. Anything. 

Then, Ecer really throws a wrench in it and tells me his name is pronounced ee- sir. So I said, “ee-sir, you are now destroying everything I know about Spanish. You’ve claimed my postcards for your time capsule. What’s next?”

He said, “I will call you.”

And, he never called.

Now we wait. Will the letters from Portugal and Spain ever arrive? What year will it be? Does Ecer even speak Spanish? Is there really not a key? So many mysteries.

Last night I was walking through the Lido cafe and one of my time capsule brethren ran up. “I have to ask- did they get your post cards out of the time capsule?” “Who knows,” I said, “My man Ecer didn’t call me yet!”