Formal Night, and No One Was Looking: Being Invisible

Everyone else dressed up. I dressed comfortable.

I was, without question, the worst-dressed person on the cruise ship.

And I did not care.

My 18-year-old son disagreed with my claim to the title of worst-dressed.

He said he was clearly the worst-dressed person on the ship because he wore gym shorts, a T-shirt, and a hat every day.

I tried to explain that an 18-year-old in shorts and a hat looks sporty. Casual. Intentionally underdressed.

Early in the trip, there was a blonde, cheerful photographer stationed on the promenade deck. Her job was to take people’s pictures—couples, families, formal pictures, casual pictures. She had mastered the art of bright eye contact and asking strangers if they wanted their photograph taken.

When I walked down the hall, she looked past me. Around me. Anywhere but at the gray-haired woman in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and slippers, whose body language screamed, " No pictures.

One night, I jokingly asked her, “Do you want to take my picture?”

She laughed and said, “Sure.”

I said, “No way.”

She smiled and said, “Come back on dress-up night.”

From that point on, every evening when I walked past her in my jeans and T-shirt, we chatted.

She’d ask, “Tonight?”

And I’d say, “No.”

It became a standing joke.

Formal night arrived. I was not dressed formally, but I was wearing a nice shirt, pants, and closed-toe shoes. I never saw the photographer.

Much later—close to midnight—I left my cabin. I was in sweatpants, slippers, a T-shirt, and no bra. I was a grandma on a mission, wading past a couple of thousand people to reach the buffet for my nightly chocolate milk.

The ship, meanwhile, had transformed.

Short dresses. Long dresses. Suits and ties. Sequins. Makeup. Hair sprayed into submission. People in five-inch heels teetered past me, looking absolutely stunning—and deeply uncomfortable. Some truly were beautiful: elegant, polished, magazine-ready.

I felt no jealousy. None.

I would not have traded places with a single one of them for all the gowns on board.

I sat on a bench for a while, people-watching, perfectly content in my braless T-shirt, sipping my chocolate milk.

Maybe people were staring. Maybe they thought, What is wrong with that woman?

Or perhaps I had reached the age of invisibility. I was completely comfortable watching the glamorous while I slummed.

On my way back to my cabin, I passed the photographer again.

We locked eyes.

She said, “It’s dress-up night.”

And we both lost it.

She laughed so hard she forgot to be professionally polite. We’d joked about it for days—that maybe I’d surprise her. And I did. I don’t think she believed I could dress down any further.

I’m not sure I could have dressed any more casually than I did that night.

Unless I’d booked one of those nude cruises

Where I absolutely would not have been sitting naked on a bench, watching naked people.