I went to a pirate show in Pigeon Forge

“I’ve been ready since the day I was born.”

“Are you ready?” My wife, Emily, asked as she put her arm in mine and we walked into the theater. It was our first date in months because that’s called parenthood.

“I’ve been ready since the day I was born,” I said.

When a man turns 30, he is constitutionally required to become fascinated by something that embarrasses his wife: I chose the Golden Age of Piracy.

I’ve read books, I’ve watched documentaries, I even insisted we go on a Pirate Tour on our honeymoon in Charleston.¹

So, last Sunday night for my birthday, my wife and I went to the Pirates Voyage dinner show in Pigeon Forge.

My wife puts up with me well. She had a good time on the Pirate Tour in Charleston, even when I tried to impress the tour guide with how much I already knew.

But our honeymoon feels like a different lifetime happening to different people. We’ve only been married three years, but we’ve bought a house, had our first daughter and now have a son on the way. That’s a long way of saying date nights are rare.

On our last date night, we were invited downtown for dinner with friends and had a babysitter. Emily had been looking forward to it all week. But after dinner, I was dragging, and couldn’t stop yawning.

“Where do you want to go next?” she said.

“Well, I’m too full for ice cream.”

“We could hang out at Jig and Reel?” she said.

“I don’t want to spend any more money. We’re already over our budget.”

“Oh, okay. Well, what do you want to do?” She was talking more to the sidewalk than to me.

“Could we just go home?”

The babysitter was surprised to see us so early.

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“I’m here for the story,” I said to Emily as we sat down at our table in the Pirates Voyage theater. There were gangplanks, swinging ropes and the sterns of two pirate ships, all surrounding large pools. We had a front-row table (I paid extra for premium seats).

The guests are divided into two, ahem, crews: sapphire and red. I chose sapphire because blue is my favorite color and we’re in the realm of choosing things based on our most childish of preferences.

Our captain appeared: Indigo LeBleu. I saluted him and took the oath he offered us after he disavowed the Crimson Crew’s Captain Scarlet as “Good at only one thing: having people hate you.”

Then, there he was: Blackbeard himself; The King of the Pirates². The crew lowered him on a throne of cannons and treasure chests from the ceiling. His tricorn hat resting devilishly upon his massive head, and three pistols strapped to his chest.

I imagined this was the real Blackbeard. Edward Thatch himself. Perhaps he’d found a cursed treasure that made him immortal, faked his death off of Ocracoke Island in 1718 and once the pirate game dried up, he gallivanted around the West Indies, and eventually found himself in Tennessee with a way to make $21 an hour portraying himself (while also doing a quick advertisement for Dolly’s Imagination Library between the main course and dessert).

I dipped my Buccaneer biscuit into my Voyager Creamy Vegetable Soup while our server, Max, plopped a scoop of Matey’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese onto my plate. A swashbucklin’ scoundrel above me grabbed a robe and swung across the stage, vaulted high into the air, turned two and a quarter flips and splashed into the water. Next to the high dive above the stern of the blue ship, Calico Jack was in a sword fight to the death with the ghost crew of Davy Jones while a mermaid was hanging from an anchor-shaped trapeze.

It’s the most fun my wife and I have had together in weeks.

The possibly (hopefully) real Blackbeard was on the deck of the ship imploring the crowd to shout “Argghhh me mateys!”

I shouted back. Loudly.

Emily smiled, laid her head on my shoulder, and laughed.

1. Erik the host and his wife, Sabrina, really do an amazing job. This isn’t a commercial gig to sucker in tourists, they love the history, Charleston, and are exceptionally kind to guests: https://www.charlestonpiratetour.com/our-story

2. This is inaccurate. The pirates of Blackbeard’s time were outcasts, men of no country who’d been cast aside by societies with wealthy monarchs ruling them. They hated kings. The closest thing they had to a king was the leader of the Pirate Republic on Nassau, Benjamin Hornigold, whom Blackbeard served as First Mate. I didn’t have to google any of that confirming that this will truly embarrass my wife. My work here is done.