10. Free Cruise!

I think we're at around, like, 650 downloads , which is awesome , and I really appreciate you all so much , thank you , thank you, thank you ! (music in) Welcome to Heal Grow with Nickie . I'm your host , Nickie Kromminga Hill . Here we talk about everything Grief , hope , illness , work , family, tragedy , possibilities , fun stuff, and not-so-fun stuff stuff .

It's all on the table . Let's take a look at our lives and work to Heal and Grow, together . I'm so glad you're here . (music out) I am so excited for this week's podcast . This is one of my favorite stories to tell . There might be moments today where you think , wait , is this true ? And I assure you that this is a true story .

It should actually be made into a TV special or a movie or something like that . So I'm going to go on the record right now and say that I , Nicole Dawn Hill , which is my legal name , own this story , copyright 2023 . Me just saying this makes it legal , right ? Okay , here we go . The year is 2002 and I am 27 years old .

And at this point in my life, I have a handful of friends who are entertainers on cruise ships . One of the things that a lot of younger people do is they audition to be an entertainer on cruise ships .

So they might be the piano player in the bar , or they might be in the big show , in the theater , or maybe they're in a roving band or something like that . So I have a lot of friends that I did theme park with and they went on to be cruise ship entertainers . And one of these friends let's just call him Tom , to protect his privacy .

Hi , Tom , I know you're listening to this . Tom and I are good friends from our theme park days And at the time of this story he's actually working on Royal Caribbean as an entertainer and he's in between contracts . And he says , hey , do you want to go on a cruise with me ?

I had never been on a cruise at this point And I was like , yeah , this sounds amazing , I'd love to go on a cruise with you . And then he adds that he has a friend that he would like me to meet . Let's call this guy Scut . We're going to protect his privacy too . We're going to call him Scut , and Tom knows Scut from Royal Caribbean .

They had been on the same ship for a while And Scut works in the I don't know what they call it the education department , maybe kids programming , I'm not sure , but he works with the kids . So when you go on cruises , lots of times you could just drop your kids off and people will take care of them . That sounds like they're babysitting them .

It's not that , it's way more than that , it's way cooler than that . And this Scut guy works with the teens . If I'm remembering correctly , he worked with the teens . So , anyway , Scut and Tom are friends . Tom wants me to meet Scut And if I go on this cruise I'm going to get some type of special pricing .

I think they call it friends and family discount or something like that . So I'm pretty pumped for this . I'm going on a week-long cruise with my friend , I get a discounted rate , plus there's a potential love connection . So I'm thinking this is going to be good And I wholeheartedly say yes to this invitation . And then Tom backs out .

He decides he's not going to go . And he and I were actually just talking about this the other day and we can't remember why he decides not to go . But he decides not to go .

And in the moment I'm super , super ticked about it And I'm upset because I think , okay , well , there goes that, I guess I'm not going , because I'm not going to go on a cruise by myself unless , like , why not ?

I've already purchased the plane ticket , I already have a room on the ship , I'm still going to get this discounted rate , so maybe I should go anyway . So I talked to my mom about it . You know, what are the safety issues ? Is this a really stupid idea for a young woman to go on a cruise ship by herself ?

And I talked to Scut about it and he says you should come anyway . We had talked to , we had talked a bit on the phone before I met him in person and we had been emailing and everything . And he says , yeah , you should come anyway because I have passenger status And what that means .

I don't know if this is still the correct terminology or not , but at the time passenger status meant that you had to do your assigned ship duties duty , but when you weren't working , you were free to roam the ship the way a passenger would . He told me that he was going to be able to have meals with me .

So I thought okay , well , Tom's not going to go , but Scut's going to be there and I don't know if we're going to have a love connection or not , but I'll have somebody to hang out with on the ship , I won't be alone . So I decide to go . I say yes , I'm going to go do this . So the big day comes and I fly into gosh .

I don't even really remember where I flew into . I don't remember much of the itinerary either . I think it was the Western Caribbean . So I fly in , I take a cab to the cruise terminal and Scut meets me there . It was really great to finally meet him in person after we had been talking on and off for a while and after Tom had introduced us and everything .

And I go in to check in and Scott pays for my cruise . flat-out just pays for it . I try to pay him back . He's like no , no , that's fine And it was like you know , I still got that discount , but it was like $700 , $700 , $800 . It was a significant amount of money to pay on anyone , let alone a stranger .

So I check in , he pays for me , I walk onto the ship and then I hardly ever see him again . For the entire cruise . He sort of ditches me . So while I'm on this cruise , all these fun and sort of interesting things happen . The first night at dinner .

In my brain I remember this as being like a formal night , but I don't know that it actually was , because you usually don't have formal night be the first night of the cruise . At any rate , i'm completely dressed up for dinner and I'm seated and I think that Scut is going to join me .

He tells me he's going to join me for dinner And seated seated at a four-top , so it's supposed to be Scut and I . And then I don't know who the other couple is . In about 15 minutes , and to me , sitting there by myself , one of the servers comes up and says Hey , you have a newlywed couple assigned at your table .

I don't know how much you're going to see of them this week . I'm like , oh , that's okay . That's okay Because you know my companion is coming to dinner , except that he never comes . He does not show up for dinner .

So you know , i'm making the most of it like I do And I eat my entire dinner alone four-top a , and I would say maybe sometime halfway through the entree . So if you've never been on a ship before . There's a communal dining area and it's these just gorgeous . You know four or five course meals every night .

So when you dine , especially for dinner , you plan on staying there for a while . That's usually at least an hour and a half , two hours , which is wonderful if you're with companions that you want to hang out with . But I was , you know , by myself . So I'm just sitting there by myself eating and this older gentleman comes up to talk to me .

I actually , i think I caught him out of the corner of my eye coming to talk to me , and then I could just feel him coming up behind me and I just was like oh , please , don't talk to me . I'm pretty embarrassed , i don't . I just wanna hurry up and finish this meal and go hide .

And he taps me on my back and he says excuse me , are you dining alone ? And I said well , that was not my plan , but it certainly seems as if I am dining alone tonight at least . And he said well , would you like to join me at my table ?

And at this point I'm like no , i don't wanna join you at your table , cause he paused just a little bit too long before he said we have a lot of space , we have extra space at our table if you'd like to join all of us . And he , he points in this direction and I look and there's like 10 people waving at me like hi , hi , come on over .

And I said sure . I said sure , so I got up and I go and I sit at this table and I think there were five couples , four couples . Anyway , one of the couples at their table didn't even make it onto the cruise .

So they had these two extra spots And they invited me to join them for the rest of the week , which I ended up doing , because Scut never showed up to dinner ever . And I befriended these people . I can't even remember their names now . I don't even remember , you know , where they were from .

At one point I was emailing with them , but this is 20 years ago now , so I don't remember anything about them other than they were so kind and lovely to me .

I think all of them were in their 60s perhaps so that first night I sit down and I tell them the interesting situation that I'm in , that I'm traveling alone and I thought I would be spending time with this crew member , but I'm not . And They were Lovely , lovely the entire week .

I was so sad to say goodbye to them because they were just so wonderful , so I had all of my evening meals with them every single night . So that was seven nights , I think .

Another funny thing that happened is that on this particular ship It was Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas they have a Johnny Rackett's restaurants on it and Scut would ask me to go over to Johnny Rackett's a couple of times and Get him a hamburger . Now , now , Nickie would be like , get your own damn hamburger .

But then , this is back when I was desperate for anyone to like me and I just wanted to belong to everything I would say , sure , sure , I'll get you your hamburger . So several times I would go over there and get him a burger . I was there so often actually that the staff started to recognize me .

And The staff had this thing where , when certain songs would play , they would stop what they were doing and then they would start dancing . And one of those songs was Respect .

And you know , I'm a dancer and I pick up choreography really easily , and So every time I would go in there , they'd be like Nickie , Nickie, here here put on Respect , so they would put on this song and I would dance along . At one point , passengers started recognizing me as the girl who was traveling alone and they didn't .

They didn't always know my name , but they would start talking to me . Oh hey , how's it going ? How are you doing today ? This is the girl that's traveling by herself . And so I started befriending all of of these people . There was one afternoon where I Went to go visit Scut while he was working the teen dance club . It was the middle of the afternoon .

He was the DJ . There was a whole bunch of kids in the teen dance club , but none of them were dancing and I had started talking to them a little bit . You know , they knew who I was because I was around a lot trying to hang out with Scut .

And one of these days , one of those days , i was sitting on the floor talking to a couple of the teens , which now I'm realizing is super creepy , but at the time it didn't seem like it was . So I'm sitting on the floor and There's this sign next to me .

I don't remember what it , what it said , but it was one of those Signs that's inside one of those metal sign holders , and Somebody was was running and accidentally tipped it over and it fell on my head and I got this huge Goose egg . And it was really the only time that Scut paid any attention to me on the cruise .

He's like we should get you down to the infirmary And I was like no , no , we don't have to go down there . And I had to go down the infirmary and I had to fill out like an accident report And I had to put ice on my goose egg and then I had this big ol bruise . What were some other funny things that happened ?

Oh , they have these yogurt machines everywhere that were always on . So I would just do this like Lone r lap at two o'clock in the morning and I would just go out by the pools and there's nobody out there And I would just have my frozen yogurt .

So if this does get turned into a movie or , you know mini-series a or something , we have to include the frozen yogurt and then that can go into like some type of montage with some sad music behind it .

The only time during the week , other than when I was in the teen dance club , that I even saw Skut was we were in St Thomas and we went to Megen's Bay Beach . I don't know if you've been there before , but it's just stunning . So I think I had asked him like what are you doing , you know , when we're in St Thomas ?

He's like oh , a couple of my friends and I are going to go to Megan's Bay . Do you want to go ? And I was like , yeah , We were there . I remember at one point I said to him am I not what you expected ? Because this guy just like totally ghosted me .

I mean , it's absolutely fine if we aren't attracted to each other , but he was just downright ignoring me the entire time And he was like no , no , you're exactly what I expected , but like in that Debbie Downer sort of way . So I just thought , okay , well , this isn't going anywhere and that's okay .

So we started walking back to the ship and we ran into one of my table mates , and two of them actually , and they were drunk . And the guy was like one of the guys is like Nickie , is this that guy that doesn't even like you ? He's not even trying to kiss you or anything . Listen , really Nickie's really great . You should totally be into her .

And I was just so embarrassed I was like , oh , this is horrible . At one point I call my mom from the ship . Now it's like $7 a minute to call somebody from the ship and I talked to her for 10 minutes And I was just like this is horrible . I should never have come . Not only does he not like me , he won't even really talk to me .

So that was a golden moment . So at the end of the cruise it turns out that that was Scut's last week working . He was going back to California , so he and I and another one of his friends shared a cab from the ship to the airport and we made out for a little bit in the backseat but it wasn't that great . And then I called him once after the cruise .

I want to say it was maybe a week . Maybe a week afterward I called him and he said hey , I'm having dinner right now . Can I call you back when I'm done ? I said sure , and that is the last time that I have heard from Scott . But hey , free cruise . I was really bummed that we weren't attracted to each other or he wasn't attracted to me .

Like I said , that was back in my days of desperation , where really I probably would have changed my whole life for this man had he shown any interest . So it's a good thing he didn't show any interest , because I do not need to be changing my life for anyone .

So that was a bummer , but I was mostly just bummed that he ignored me , because I felt really crappy about that for a while .

And then once I started leaning into it , which is when I started just meeting people from all around the world And you know , granted , i'm never going to see any of them again , i don't even remember the names of the people I sat with but it turned out to be this really wonderful adventure .

And since then I haven't done a cruise or like a solo big trip , but I've done a couple of solo road trips And I don't know , i feel like I just learned a lot about myself when I'm traveling alone or just anytime I'm alone . I lived alone for a while and that was that was a really wonderful experience too .

And you know , i just learned to sort of like myself and be alone with myself . And I had to challenge myself to leave my room sometimes because I thought like what's the stinkin point ? But you know , the point is you're on a cruise , you're in the Caribbean , it's gorgeous .

Do not miss out on this opportunity just because you're bummed out that it didn't work out the way you thought it was going to .

And I'm just going to encourage you to maybe do some solo travel plans too , and maybe you know , maybe it's not a cruise , maybe it's something as crazy as that , but maybe you take two hours off and you drive over to Hudson , wisconsin , because it's 45 minutes away , or something like that .

Just learn to enjoy being by yourself , because I think I really grew during that experience And I'll never forget it . I mean , hell, it makes an incredible , an incredible story , right ? Thank you so much this week to my friends Ann and Sue and Tim , who bought me a coffee . Thank you so much .

If you would like to buy me a coffee , you can just check out the show notes from this episode and there'll be a link there . It just directs you to a page where you can shoot me five bucks and I use that to buy coffee . Or , you know , go to Target or something like that .

If you don't have a copy of my book yet , please check it out . It's on Amazon . I'll link it in the show notes as well . Or if you need someone to host your book club , or come talk to your book club . I'd be happy to do that . I also love doing book readings and book signing . So you know , give me an email . I'm also available for speaking gigs .

That's sort of a new thing for me and I would love to come and talk to your group . I would love it . Anyway , that is it for this week . I hope you enjoyed my free cruise , my free cruise story . I hope you are well . Thanks for hanging in growing with me . Mwah .

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal , health or professional advice . I am not responsible for any losses , damages or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast . This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice .