I don’t know how I can ever sufficiently thank my daughter and son-in-law for their incredibly generous anniversary gift.
Their benevolent offering was an all-inclusive cruise around the Greek islands on a luxury liner containing no fewer than nine fabulous restaurants.
I calculated the cost of the cruise in of the number of meals we’d be consuming. Taking into a seven-day voyage, dining three times each day, the total came to roughly $200 per meal.
In an effort to minimize the charges, I was able to compute that I could actually cut the cost in half by doubling my meals.
In other words, if 21 dinners came to $200 per meal, 42 was only going to cost the kids $100.
I felt I owed them that.
I called my brother in New York to check my numbers since he’s a mathematics prodigy with a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
I asked him if he can calculate how many meals I would have to consume in order to zero out the entire cost of the cruise.
He informed me that due to the law of diminishing returns, even though the unit cost would be reduced, no amount of meals could cancel the entire charge since each extra dinner would only serve to deduct a fraction of the cost.
That was disheartening news, but at least my efforts would chip away at the overall charges, so as an additional courtesy to my daughter and son-in-law, I decided to add alcohol to the calculation.
Following up on that commitment, I had a server bring me cocktails while I was soaking in the hot tub.
My wife said it reminded her of that time she brought me breakfast in bed back when we were still living in New York.
Frankly, I didn’t find that to be a very comparable exercise considering she was bringing me oatmeal in Brooklyn versus mai tais in the Aegean Sea.
Before boarding, we spent two wonderful days in Athens in a lovely hotel with rooftop dining and unobstructed views of the Parthenon, the iconic marble temple built around 440 B.C. It gave me a whole new perspective on the meaning of antiquity, even arriving at a point where I no longer call my house old just because it was built in 1986.
As dated as it is, it’s still roughly 2,400 years newer than Athena’s home atop the Acropolis.
I sent a photo to my Realtor friend back in San Diego to boast about the historic site, provoke a bit of jealousy, and await his envious .
“It’s a fixer,” he replied.
Erdos is a freelance humor columnist. him at [email protected].
