You've seen the "Fun Ships" commercials -- bunches of smiling people waving and singing "If My Friends Could See Me Now" with Cathy Lee Crosby as they drink fruity concoctions out of glasses decorated with fancy paper umbrellas.

In real life on a cruise ship (if there is such a thing), it's not like the ad. First of all, in the commercials the smiling people are leaning on the rail, pondering the calm sea in a mood of serenity. In real life, instead of leaning against the rail, the boat people clutch it desperately while winds of 90 miles per hour threaten to send them overboard, ruining the hairdos they just paid $50 for in the ship's beauty salon.

And in real life the people on deck are not smiling either. They're gagging. . . wondering why they ever paid to be nauseous. Somehow the commercials never show the 15 foot waves which rock the boat or the long lines at the infirmary as people take a number and wait for Dramamine fixes to ease their churning stomachs.

The people who are not sea-sick are below deck, participating in the main activity aboard ship: eating. A crew of 300 non-English speaking, rail-thin waiters serves seven meals a day.

It's quite a picture to see -- the ship creaking under the burden of 900 overweight, over-primped senior citizens pointing to entrees on the menu and grunting as the waiters mumble in Spanish that they haven't eaten in two days, but "Sure, another five pieces of pie for madame will be no problem."

And then there are the Patch People. . . with patches of medicine planted behind their ears to prevent nausea. A woman at my dining table was one of the Patch People -- her eyes were so blurred by the medicine that she kept mistaking my mom for her husband. But even though she couldn't see straight to read the menu, she said her old stomach never felt better. Mildred could chow down with the best of the over-sixty crowd.

Although food is king aboard ship, nightly bingo is a strong contender. Each night after dinner (actually it was between the first and second dinner of the evening), all 900 senior citizens stuff themselves into The Tropicana Lounge, waving five dollar bills as they rush the stage to vie for bingo cards. When the festivities begin, all bifocals are glued to the stage where a man sits calling numbers. The room sways from side to side, but these cards are perforated, so no one worries about losing their chips. The mood is intense, the air thick with excitement as veterans of bingo face off.

As quickly as the game begins, it is over. One person wins and the rest simply sigh and put their money away until tomorrow night when they will once again test their luck with the chips.

I have since vowed never to play bingo.

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Because eating and bingo-playing are top priority aboard ship, many of the passengers simply cannot find time to venture ashore at our ports of call, especially if the ports were foreign. When we docked in Grenada and Venezuela, a good number of passengers didn't set foot off ship, fearing for their safety in a different culture. And if they did risk going ashore, it was to sit in sterile air-conditioning (talking about bingo, of course) as buses shuttled them to "Scenic Areas" where they snapped photos to show everyone at home what adventures they had.

And while I know I missed out on a lot of bingo strategy because we never took these tours, I have some consolation. When I think of the places we went, I remember the taxi drivers who carted us around in homemade tours -- Royston in Granada who has eleven children and a wife who braids hair on the beach for a dollar a braid. And Joseph from Aruba, who discussed just what ingredients his wife uses in her wonderful stew made from wild goats that roam the desert island.

Even looking at the few pictures I do have of scenic spots brings no recollection of the names and dates associated with them. I remember instead the times I felt I was getting a glimpse of life in a different culture. Such a glimpse is not available through the darkened windows of a tour bus.

In the company of over-fed stomachs and under-fed minds aboard the cruise ship, I realized a fault of American thinking. We're too pleased with the portions we receive from our own culture to try a new side-dish.