The Matt-a-pult

Since so many people have emailed me about this, I figured I'd take them time to write out a bit of the Matt-a-pult story.

How I got flung off the deck of the largest ship in the world: A story in three parts.

First off, the first two weeks after signing onto a ship for RCI you are subjected to possibly the most mind numbing training videos in the world. I mean 4 hours a day of bad 70s acting. And to top it off, it starts at 6:30am. There's a reason why a lot of people don't make it through their first two weeks. Anyway, on your last day of training, you go into the training room a virtual zombie and are told that you need to go back to your cabin, and put on something you don't mind getting messed up. Oh god.

So I schlep myself back to my cabin, throw on my bathingsuit and an old T-shirt, and trudge up to Deck 4. There we learn how to depot the emergency rafts for the umpteenth time, and I figure we just get to do it now so we'll be getting a bit greasy. Well, part of the *Last chance off the ship before it explodes* manuevers is this fun little system called the "rapid descent arm". This thing is little more than a pulley on a slingshot with two harnesses, and the safety officer tells us it's "Not for the weak of heart". Great, we learn all about how the premise is you harness two people on either end of this pulley, One long, one short. As the arm swings out the person on the short end is "rapidly but gently" lowered into the water, where he/she can remove the clip, and the next person can descend as their rope has now become short. Sounds simple right? well et me tell you, it's overly simple.

The Matt-a-pult. Our safety officers tells us he'll be demonstrating this principle using two of the more resilient crew members in the training group: (Read: I'm looking for beefcake). As it's me, a few philippinos that weigh as much as my chair, and a few Canadian chicks he decides I make the perfect candidate for projectile. I'm looking forward to getting to boulette down the ship at a civilized speed, so I'm okay with this. I'm paired with said chair-weighing philippino, and we're soon harnessed, this is my approximate memory of what follows:

Safety Officer: "Alright, clip this hook to your lifejacket"

Me: "Alright" *Clip*

Safety Officer "Now I'll gently swing the armiture out over the water"

*Large german safety officer kicking the Davit so hard Chuck Norris is jealous*

Me: "Wha--- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!~!!!!!"

*Matt becomes the first human being to break the sound barrier without a vehicle*

Me: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!~!!!"

*Matt hits the water-like concrete and nearly voids his bowels*



At this point my weight has kicked in on the other end of the line, my hook unclips and you can guess what happens.

Poor 70lb Phillipino guy: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!~!!!"


After this endeavour, we were required to gather our innards from the sea floor, shove them back into whatever orifice they came out of, and go flip over the now capsized emergency floatation device while the rest of the class takes the elevator to deck 1 and then climbs a ladder into the water.

You sould pray your on-the-job training is so thrilling.