from all over the world, and just to spice things up we started to play
a game called “booze or dare” which was just a variation on “truth or
dare,” only when you lost, you had to take a shot of alcohol and
perform a dare as well. One of the girls we were with, a Dutch girl
named Annie had been losing pretty miserably, and after she swilled
her sixth shot of Ouzo, Yippee decided that her dare would be to go
out onto the deck of the ship, and expose her breasts while screaming
that she needed to be milked. She got up without protest, and we
followed her out onto the deck. There were mostly older people with
their families out there, and we realized that this would be a fairly
racy spectacle, even for Europeans.
The girl stumbled out onto the deck, and promptly tried to pull
her T-shirt over her head. She was so drunk, however, that she
proceeded to get very tangled up in it. Stumbling around spastically
on the deck while screaming at the top of her lungs and flapping her
head and arms, she accidentally tumbled over the railing and
plunged into the sea. We panicked. Someone ran to a purser to have
the ship stopped, while everyone else screamed “woman overboard,”
and the next thing we all knew, there appeared a figure from out of
nowhere running down the length of the deck with a life preserver in
one hand, and a bottle of Ouzo in the other. It was Yippee. He jumped
overboard and judged his landing within meters of the poor Dutch
girl who had freed herself from her improvised straightjacket but was
still flapping her arms around in desperation. The boat slowed and
reversed for the rescue, while we all grasped the railing to see what
had happened to Yippee and Annie. The spotlight scanned the
undulating ocean surface. Suddenly, the beacon highlighted two
figures floating on the bobbing waves. As the ship cruised slowly
closer, we could make out one female in a life-preserver, and one
shaggy-looking Australian swinging a full bottle of liquor around
crazily in an effort to ward off sharks.
When everything was back to normal, and Yippee and Annie
were back in the boat, Yippee said to her, “You know Annie darling,
you never finished that dare.”
Enraged, she chased after him, hitting him repeatedly on the
head, while he laughed hysterically. He was chased around the boat
until finally tripping down the same stairs he had fallen down the
night before, causing another fresh cut on his forehead. By the time
the trip was over, even those of us who weren’t impressed by the
strength of Yippee’s character, had to pay respects to the almighty
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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