A reminder once again that this is stage 3 in my vacation series, if you haven't read stage 1 and stage2, it's like you just walked into the living room in the middle of a movie your husband/or wife has been watching for the past hour, sit down next to them, then proceed to ask them 100 questions on what's going on. "Why is that guy angry?" "What did that girl do to him?" "Why did that guy just hack up that little puppy?" "Just what IS the purpose of Jersey Shore?" Etc. Then your spouse finally blows up and tells you to get out and let him/her watch the rest of the movie in peace and you can go rent the movie and watch the WHOLE THING yourself. (The moral of this story is . . . . . GO READ STAGE 1 AND 2 so you will understand what's going on!!!!!. . . . . pant . . . pant. . . . THIS IS PART 3!!!! Who starts reading a book in the middle of it????? SHEESH!!!!!!)
Once Dad, or Mom, spoke those two magic words, "We're Here", the car would come alive.
The long car ride would be finally over for now. The car smells like sweat, kid's feet, wet bathing suits, stale peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that were shoved under the seat to avoid eating them, and the sweet smell of exhaustion. The packing job that Dad did so tediously has now taken on a much more chaotic, and post apocalyptic look because of all the moving, digging, squishing, and shoving that us three kids have done over the past 8-20 hours. Dad is too tired to care because he is the one that has done all the driving and he is just ready to climb into a bed, Mom is so sick of being the buffer between the kids and her husband that she just wants to get out of the car and leave the little spawns of Satan behind, us kids, however, are now filled with energy and adrenalin because they have been sleeping for the last two hours of the trip and we have finally arrived at THE DESTINATION!!!!!
Depending on your experience, arriving at the destination usually took on two forms. If you were going to see relatives, usually the relatives would rush out their front door and come greet you at the car. Dad and Mom would have to act like they were so excited to be there and the kids would rush out of the car and jump happily into whomever's arms were out stretched towards them. Of course, once the relative would catch a whiff of the B.O. coming off their Grandchild/Nephew/Niece, they would usually stop the hug instantly and opt to high five the other stinky children.
This was Dad's moment to shine though. He would climb out of that car and even while his arms were wrapping around whatever relative was there, he would announce to the world just how fast he made the trip in. Now he didn't round the numbers up or down at all, he would tell everyone the exact hours and minutes that it took. It was like some form of badge of honor if he managed to do it quicker than the other male relative that was there at the time. If the time was quicker than the other relative, then that relative would have to grunt out one of two responses to save their pride. "You must have been speeding." or "You must not have gotten as much traffic as I did." With both their manhood's intact, the next stage would begin. Unloading the car.
There are two different camps for this part. Camp A. would walk into the house first and take a seat to relax for a minute before tackling the job of lugging everything in. Camp B. would start immediately at the task at hand and would enlist everyone within 50 yards in helping with the unloading. "Here Grandma, grab this suitcase. Oh, you still have a free hand? Here, grab this heavy, stinky bag full of the wet bathing suits from the motel last night." No matter what camp your family was part of, it was the job of the kids to figure out a way to disappear as quickly as possible to get out of having to help unload the car. If done correctly, we wouldn't have to lift a thing during the unpacking and would get some valuable playtime in as well. If, however, you did get caught by Mom or Dad and told to grab some stuff out of the car, it was in your best interest to just grab the smallest item that you can and then act like it was heavy. You would be amazed at how heavy and burdensome I could make a pillow look. Then you would lug that one item into the house and make a beeline straight for the bathroom announcing to the world that you had to "Take the Browns to the super bowl" and then stay in there for as long as you possibly could until all the stuff was inside the house.
The only time this plan didn't work is if instead of visiting relatives, you were staying in a motel. Then you didn't have a chance at getting out of the work because there were only a few of you and there was no place to hide. You all became pack mules and it was just better for all involved if you got it done as quickly as possible.
Now I'm going to break this up into the two different experiences we had depending on if we either were staying with relatives or staying in a motel.
If we were staying with relatives, the same thing would usually happen first . . . The announcement of the sleeping arrangements. This was such a predictable routine, but it would play out the same every time. Whoever the relative we were staying at would announce where my Mom and Dad were sleeping first. "Fred and Betty, you will be sleeping in OUR bed and we will be sleeping on the fold out couch in the den." They would put extra emphasis on the word OUR, to let everyone know the sacrifice that they were making and they might as well say, " . . . and we will be sleeping in the most uncomfortable place we could imagine", by the way they inflected the sentence. You would then get the protest from my folks, "No, we will sleep in the den. You don't have to give up your bed for us." Then the rebuttal from my relative, "The decision is already made." To which the subject was now dropped because, truth be told, my folks didn't want to sleep on that lumpy piece of crap fold out couch anyways according to the conversation I heard them having in the car earlier. As far as us kids were concerned, we would find the nearest guest bed, couch, or floor that we could find to sleep on, because kids are expected to be able to sleep just about anywhere, and sad but true, they are right. Kids CAN sleep anywhere.
If you were staying at a hotel, after unloading the car, us kids wouldn't even bother asking. We would find that stinky, wet bag of our swimming suits and just put them on. Once again, I cannot stress the horrible pain putting on a wet, cold bathing suit caused to us boys. Does the term "turtling" mean anything to you???? Pain, or no pain, nothing was going to keep us from that pool. Not temperature, not time, not floaties, not anything. We would grab EVERY towel in that room and run out the door. Mom and Dad would look at each other and have that mental conversation whether or not at least one of them needed to supervise us and after a few minutes of internal struggle, one of them would follow. That is, unless we were lucky enough to get the room that overlooked the pool, then they would just open the curtains that were made out of a material that I have never seen before, and that was good enough for them. Parenting from afar worked just as well, and gave them a chance at possible "alone time". MY folks never did that, but maybe yours did. (Mental trauma comes free of charge. You are welcome.)
The first night came and went and everyone slept pretty well due to the total exhaustion of the travel. If you stayed with relatives, you would usually wake up to the smell of orange juice and bacon. If you stayed in a motel, you would wake up with the smell of your brother's gas that he just had a foot away from you in the bed and a laser beam of light that was shooting in through the crack of the curtains that was burning your retinas out since 6 o'clock in the morning.
Our family would usually focus a lot of our vacation at the beach. When you come from a state like Ohio, you found the beach to be a wonderful place that you'd NEVER get to see and experience unless you were on vacation, so 9 times out of 10, we would load up our car and head out to the beach. You would think that we would all remember year after year the problems of doing this, but NOPE, every vacation was the same. We would head out to the beach early, stay all day long, head back to where we were staying, and then the pain would set in. I'm pretty sure most of you know exactly what I'm talking about. SUNBURN!!!! I really don't remember much about sun block back then, or any big campaign against skin cancer, I just remember getting some kind of useless white cream rubbed all over my body throughout the day. I also remember the joy of getting it rubbed all over me after I was covered in sand and my Mom's hand was also covered in sand. Talk about a skin peel!!!! It was the equivalent of rubbing sandpaper all over my already pinkish body. If you have never experienced that. . . . . count yourself lucky!!!!
Not only was the sunburn part of the beach experience, but there were many things that made the beach leave such a lasting impression on me. If we were at the beaches in New York, there was a pretty good chance that one could get hypothermia from the water temperature. Not that that mattered to us kids, but there was NO CHANCE that our folks were going to get in the water with us. There was the joy of sea shell collecting. We kids would grab anything, and I mean anything, that resembled a sea shell and want to drag it back to Ohio with us. Magically though, most of the shells would be "stolen by the seagulls" by the time we got in the car and we would each be left with one shell a piece. Mom would always pack a lunch to take out there and by the time you got around to eating and drinking, EVERYTHING was covered in sand. Your ham and cheese sandwich would crunch, your can of Coke would be covered in sand, and as a kid, you just went with it and digested 50% sand with every bite and swallow. I now understand where the word SANDwich came from. Taking in huge mouthfuls of salt water while taking a huge wave upside the head that your brother didn't give you a "heads up" on and lastly, the sand, the sand, the SAND!!!
We would leave that beach and every one of us would have a minimum of 3 pounds of sand on us and in us. That's right. . . . I said IN US!!! There was not a crevice or orifice on our anatomy that didn't have sand on it. I can't remember if the beaches we went to back then had the useless showers outside that most beaches have now, but regardless if they did or didn't, we would have had to strip completely naked and use a pressure washer to get all that sand off of us before we got in the car. Heaven forbid if we had a long ride in the car back to where we were staying, because it would get pretty uncomfortable in my "nether regions" the longer that sand worked my skin. Plus . . . add the now glowing sunburn on top of ALL THAT FUN, and I was more than ready to tell you where the gold was buried.
Here we all were, only one day into our vacation, and the entire family was now in mass amounts of pain. I didn't want anyone coming within 4 feet of my personal space because I knew they would brush up against my lobster read skin and cause me to burst into flames. What a way to spend the rest of the vacation. The first half of it would be everyone in pain and miserable, and the second half would be everyone itching and looking like we were half human and half reptile by all the shedding skin coming off our body. Of course this led to a few "who could pull the longest piece of skin off of them" contest between us kids. Mom and Dad always wondered what those things that looked like potato chips were in the back seat of the car. I never had the heart to tell them that it was their kid’s skin.
You had the beach, and if you were lucky, you would get to do one other big adventure while on vacation. For us, we would always take a trip into New York City when we saw my Grandma and Uncle out on Long Island. That would be such an exciting trip to a small child because we would see the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Twin Towers, and so many other sites that just amazed us. In fact, I can remember a particular trip when we rode the subway, that I got to see my first homeless man, gang members, and upon going back up to the street . . . strip clubs. What trip would be complete until your 11 year old boy got to see flashing GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS and NUDE LIVE GIRLS neon signs in between his Mother's fingers as she tried to cover his face, in vain I might add.
If we were in Florida, no trip was complete unless we went to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. (That's because Universal Studios didn't exist back then, so I wasn't cheating on them). It was the most magical place in the world to a child. I can remember going in the days that they first opened up, and instead of just paying one entrance fee, you would purchase tickets to ride the rides. What would suck was that you would end up at the end of the day with only the crappy rides left to do because you had used up all the cool ride tickets early on in the day. So instead of getting to ride the Haunted Mansion, which traumatized me as a kid, one more time, we had to ride It's a Small World right before we left, which gave us all such a WONDERFUL song to have stuck in our heads all the way home.
We all know though, just how quick vacations went. It would seem we would pull in the driveway one minute, and the next, we would be loading all our crap back into the car for the sad ride home. We ate, swam, saw sights, slept on the floor, got spoiled by relatives, and took very little time to actually relax, and before we knew it, it was done. It's the memories that would stick with us though. I'll share one of my favorites to close this blog.
My Uncle Henry was such a great guy and we could always look forward to when we visited him in New York, he was going to take us three kids to Toys R Us and let us each pick out a toy. I can't remember having a Toys R Us around us in Ohio, so when we loaded up the car for that trip with Uncle Henry, I can say that the excitement level was just as high as if we were going to the Magic Kingdom for me. We would drive the 15 minutes to the store and the coolest part was that it was just us three kids and him. No parents along to make us be smart with our choices, just us and the toys and an Uncle with the wallet. I'm sure we had some kind of limit, but to me, letting me pick something out that I wanted, no matter how stupid it was, was worth however much or how little it cost. I loved these trips with my Uncle and will always remember the joy it brought me. I have tried to take that with me in gifts that I buy for kids and also letting a kid spend their own money in any way they want, within reason though. No drugs or alcohol!!!!
We have now been through the Preparation, the Travel, the Destination, and the only thing left to talk about is the Return Home. I will cover that shortly. For now. . . . .
SMILE!!!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Trip Down Memory Lane Pt. 4 - Vacation Stage 2 - Traveling
(This is stage 2 of my vacation series, so if you haven't read stage 1 yet. . . . .WHY NOT????
click here to catch up http://scottsweitzer.blogspot.com/2011/06/trip-down-memory-lane-pt-4-vacation.html )
When we last left my "puke", the car was finally pulling out of the driveway for the last time and the vacation had officially begun. Dad was the driver, Mom was the navigator, and us three kids were wedged where ever we could fit due to the packing done by my father. I swear he didn't even factor us into the equation. I would be sitting on the hump, a suitcase ramming the back of my head, a cooler pressing into my "special place", and I was now expected to stay quiet and calm for the next 8 to 20 hours. Good luck with that Father!!!
Now on one occasion, I remember my Dad's worst fears coming to fruition. You remember me talking about how my Dad's whole worry was ANYONE finding out we were leaving on vacation and then breaking into our house and taking everything we owned? Well on this one occasion, we had just pulled out of the driveway and were pulling away from the house when my sister decided that this moment needed some emotion. She rolled down the window and proceeded to shout at the top of her lungs, "BYE HOUSE! BYE YARD! BYE TREES! BYE NEIGHBORHOOD! BYE EVERY ONE!!!" I'm truly surprised that my Dad did not get whiplash by how quick he spun around to stop this little spawn from announcing to the whole world that we were leaving. He then proceeded to panic for the next 20 minutes about who heard her shouting and he was sure they were already in our house stealing his Fruit of the Looms and Brill Cream. I think my Mom finally pointed out to him that it was 4 in the morning and there wasn't anyone up but us, so he finally dropped the club he was going to beat Alice with. DANG IT!!!!
I always wondered why my Dad would insist on leaving at some UN-GODLY hour, but now that I'm older, and have traveled with children, I finally understand it. ANY moment you can get your child to sleep in the car while on a vacation is bonus time. I'm really surprised that instead of water to drink on a trip for us kids, Mom didn't pack like 10 bottles of Nyquil to keep us "medicated" with. It was, however, a pretty traumatic time for a child to leave that early in the morning because it resembled something from either a prison movie or a boot camp movie. I would be sound asleep at 4 in the morning and then the lights in my room would come on and Mom would be telling me to go get in the car to leave. I would stagger like a zombie to my 6in x 6in seating spot on the hump and we would be in Pennsylvania before I finally gathered my senses and realized that we even left. Smart Mom and Dad. . . . . REAL SMART!!!!
Now as far as traveling as a kid, time seemed to move WAY slower than normal time. 8 hours of traveling in a car equaled a week to a child. Throw on top of that the cramped quarters as mentioned before, being shoulder to shoulder with your sworn enemies called your siblings, the lack of ANY form of entertainment, and I am truly surprised that we didn't read about kids going "Lord of the Flies" more and weeding out the herd. I can remember almost every vacation having that moment of insanity. The lack of mobility, entertainment, and having your brother's elbow in your ribs while your sister would accuse you of being on her side would drive me into a frenzy. I would either take to laughing like a madman, fighting both my brother and sister with no regard to my own safety, or singing "This Land is My Land" at the top of my lungs until I let the tension out. Don't ask about that whole singing thing please. I'm not proud of that one.
(Sounding like an old person alert) BEEEEEEEP
For those of you that might read my blog that are under 25, when I say no entertainment, I mean NO ENTERTAINMENT!!!!! We didn't have ANYTHING that resembled the Gameboy, PSP, I-Touch, I-Pod, DVD, or Cell phone. We couldn't lose ourselves in some electronic world that would make the time go faster. I was just on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and while I drove, my wife Linda was watching stuff on YouTube on her phone. Do you know how bad I would have killed to be able to see "Friday" by Rebecca Black just to dull the pain of sitting in a car smashed between my brother and sister with 7 1/2 hours still to go??? You kids have NO IDEA what it was like to have to find your own entertainment on a long car ride. It was sheer torture!!!!
(Old guy leaving now)
As younger kids, Dad would load the entire luggage into the back open area of the Country Squire station wagon, but as we got older, and crankier, he began leaving room in the back for the Alcatraz seat. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Alcatraz seat, let me explain why I call it this. Station wagons at that time, had a fold up seat in the trunk area of the automobile. Now where some station wagons had the bench seat that folded up and had you facing out the back of the vehicle, ours folded out in a manner that gave you two bench seats staring directly at each other looking out the side of the vehicle. I guess Ford decided that it was just plain rude for the child to stare out the back of the car at some poor motorist and chose to have the kid that was exiled to the Alcatraz seat to have to stare out the side of the car, which trust me when I say, you can't see ANYTHING INTERESTING. You don't even get to see all the cool billboards in the opposite direction that the kid that got to see while looking out the back window. THE VIEW SUCKED!!!!
The other reason I call it the Alcatraz seat is because there was usually a mountain of luggage in between you and the rest of the car so you truly felt like you were on an island when you were put back there. Oh, you could hear fun stuff happening from the front end of the car, but you couldn't see it or participate in it because of the lime green suitcase, red and white Igloo cooler, and the saliva stained pillows that were forming a barrier between you and the rest of the car. It was like solitary confinement for an 8 year old. Don't get me wrong, there were times that I enjoyed going back there to get away from my siblings, but you want to talk about boredom?
Then you also had to deal with the size of the seat. I'm not sure who they thought they were marketing this feature to, but you would pretty much have to put two babies back there if you wanted to use both bench seats. Each bench seat was like 3 ft long and 1 1/2 foot deep, but in between the seats for the leg room was like a whopping 8 INCHES. Take a moment to look at 8 inches on a ruler. Please tell me what two mutant kids are going to fit in that area comfortably???? It was like Ford didn't even try this feature out before they put it in this car. They just slapped it in and figured that the parents would figure it out. Heaven forbid you ever got in an accident with your kids in that back seat; safety was NOT an issue with this seat. . . . . WAIT A MINUTE!!!!! I think I just figured out why I was the first one they asked to go back there!!!!
Now that we got the seating out of the way, let's talk about the different dynamics that took place during the travel stage. First off, Dad was the driver. . . .PERIOD. Mom was the navigator. . . . PERIOD. Kids were a constant annoyance to parents . . . . . . PERIOD!!!
It was Dad's only goal to get to the destination in the quickest way possible. You didn't stop for stupid reasons like bathroom breaks or food, you ONLY stopped when you needed gas and everyone in the car had better synchronize their bladders to that cycle. Plus, back then, it was considered a treat if you stopped and got food while traveling from a fast food place. Mom would pack enough fruit and veggies to feed a dozen horses and rabbits and like twenty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for all our eating needs for the trip. Of course, after about the 6th hour of sitting in a cooler with those useless blue cool packs, the jelly would absorb into the peanut butter and you would be left with a mushy sandwich that tasted gross. So the less you dealt with Dad on these trips, the better it was for you in the long run. He was focused on getting us there with the least amount of stops as possible, and he was going to beat last years trip by at least 15 minutes.
Now Mom served two main roles on the trip. She was A) The navigator and B) the buffer between Dad and the kids. You see, long before GPS, you had the MRM (Map Reading Momma). How did this technological marvel work? First off, the MRM was voice activated!!!!! Dad would say where we were going and then Mom would pull out the maps and figure out how we were going to get there. Once again for you younger folks, there were huge sheets of paper that would have lines all over them that showed where all the roads were in a state. And when I say huge. . . . I'm not kidding. I would watch Mom unfold the map and pretty soon almost the entire windshield would be covered up with only a little square left for Dad to see out of to drive. Mom would bark out directions and then try to re-fold the map back into its original form, but that was NEVER going to happen. She would fight the map for like a minute or two, let out an exasperated groan, and then scrunch it together into something that had NO resemblance to the map that was there a minute ago. Of course, as soon as she shoved it under the seat, Dad would ask her to repeat the directions again because he wasn't listening. That's when Mom picked up that club he was going to beat Alice with earlier.
Mom's second job though was much more important. She had to be that buffer between Dad and us kids. I swear there was a blinking light somewhere on the car's dashboard that would flash when Dad was getting aggravated with us kids and putting us in the danger zone. That light would flash and Mom would snap into action by either distracting us kids by pointing out some landmark that we were missing, have us switch seats or exile one of us to Alcatraz, or she would have us sing a song on the spur of the moment. It was like we lived in one of those TV musicals where at the drop of a hat, everyone would break out into a song. I guess it's true that music soothes the savage beast because how she managed to get Dad from killing us sometimes is beyond me. This was Mom's most important role or we would have come home with less people then we left with on a couple of occasions!!!!
We kids, however, took great pride on how much chaos we could create from our little niche in the car and being that we had no real role in the trip, we could put our whole focus on creating that chaos. No matter what time we left, the same thing would happen about 15 minutes into every trip. We would get bored!!! Now boredom could play itself out in SO MANY WAYS in the confines of the car. It could be very simple or mighty complex, but there was no chance we weren't going to make it known that we needed entertainment and we needed it NOW!!!
It would usually start simple between us kids. My brother would lean against me which would push the cooler further into my "special place". I would get annoyed and lean towards my sister to compensate for my brother's rude behavior. She would then lean back into me, pushing against my weight, which in turn would push me back into my brother. He would sense my pushing and lean harder against me until I became a book titled "How to Squish Your Brother", and this book was in between those two stupid bookends called my brother and sister. We would test the waters with each other by fighting for an extra two inches to place our tushies, until one of us would finally snap and throw the first grenade in the "Let's Hack off the Folks" war of 1975. Whoever snapped first, usually my sister, would tattle on whoever they wanted to get into trouble first, which was usually me. "Mom! Scott's leaning on me." to which I would have to defend myself by saying, "Well Mark's leaning on me." to which Mark would play the innocent one and say, "No I'm not." Of course I wasn't going to let this bold faced lie go, so I would have to call him out on it. "He's lying Mom!!! He won't get off me." Then Mark would lean harder against me to make his point and Alice would shove back at me until we would be locked in a battle that no one was going to win. "EVERYONE GET IN YOUR OWN SPOT!!!" Mom would bellow, because there was no way she wanted Dad involved this early on in the trip. We would settle back down for the moment.
For the next few hours we would go from getting along with each other to wanting to kill each other. The worst was when someone decided to "break wind" in such an enclosed area. You were cheek to cheek away from the offending party and they would make sure to raise that cheek in your direction to add to the vapor trail. Of course, the person that did it would bust out laughing while the other two proceeded to hold their breath, wave their hands away from their nose, and tell on the cheek raising stink pot. "Mom! Scott left off a stinker." It was about this time that the smell reached the front seat and Mom and Dad were now involved whether you wanted them to be or not. All the windows would come down and Mom would make a blanket statement like, "If you have to have gas, just hold it."
When we finally got tired of attacking each other, we would turn our attention on Mom with a barrage of questions. "How much longer?" "When are we going to get there?" "When are we going to eat?" "Can we stop and see the World’s Largest Yarn ball?" "What are we going to do when we get there?" "Can we stop so I can pee?" "Can I crawl in the back?" "Why is Dad's vein sticking out of his forehead?”, were all part of the question period of the trip. All three of us had questions, and we wanted answers dang it!!!! Mom would have to field each and every one of those questions as quickly as possible to once again keep Dad focused on the trip. "About 2 hours more." "In about 2 hours." "Do you want a mushy sandwich?" "No." "See your Grandma." "You should have gone an hour ago when we stopped for gas." "If you can find room go ahead." "Because you are asking too many questions and he's close to pulling the car over and killing all three of you." She would answer them all keeping the buffer between us and Dad.
The last part I will talk about on the travel stage is that if we were going to Florida, it meant we would get to stay in a motel at least one night. That was the ultimate experience for a kid. It didn't matter what time at night we pulled into that motel, the first thing out of our mouths when we arrived was, "CAN WE GO SWIMMING???" It didn't matter if it was midnight, 50 degrees outside, and the pool was green, we wanted it so bad we could taste it. There was not enough "No's" in my parent's vocabularies that was going to dissuade us from getting in that pool and they knew it, so they would just say "Yes" and get it over with. We would swim for as long as they would let us, for this is what the vacation was all about. Swimming late at night, going into the freezing motel room, going to sleep three in a bed, waking up at the crack of dawn, putting back on that freezing bathing suit that would make any male an instant girl, and swimming until Dad declared that it was time to get back on the road again. Getting to stay one night in a motel made all the smells, cramped quarters, pushy siblings, gross food, and even the Alcatraz seat worth every painful moment. It was even better than staying at relatives houses because we didn't even have to pick up the towels. I will always remember the greatness that was the motel back in those days.
I could drag this on even further because I still have so many memories from the traveling part of the vacation, but due to length, I will stop it right there. I hope I was able to drag a few memories out of you during this read and I will be tackling the next stage of the vacation in my next "puke". . . . . The Destination!!!
SMILE!!!!
click here to catch up http://scottsweitzer.blogspot.com/2011/06/trip-down-memory-lane-pt-4-vacation.html )
When we last left my "puke", the car was finally pulling out of the driveway for the last time and the vacation had officially begun. Dad was the driver, Mom was the navigator, and us three kids were wedged where ever we could fit due to the packing done by my father. I swear he didn't even factor us into the equation. I would be sitting on the hump, a suitcase ramming the back of my head, a cooler pressing into my "special place", and I was now expected to stay quiet and calm for the next 8 to 20 hours. Good luck with that Father!!!
Now on one occasion, I remember my Dad's worst fears coming to fruition. You remember me talking about how my Dad's whole worry was ANYONE finding out we were leaving on vacation and then breaking into our house and taking everything we owned? Well on this one occasion, we had just pulled out of the driveway and were pulling away from the house when my sister decided that this moment needed some emotion. She rolled down the window and proceeded to shout at the top of her lungs, "BYE HOUSE! BYE YARD! BYE TREES! BYE NEIGHBORHOOD! BYE EVERY ONE!!!" I'm truly surprised that my Dad did not get whiplash by how quick he spun around to stop this little spawn from announcing to the whole world that we were leaving. He then proceeded to panic for the next 20 minutes about who heard her shouting and he was sure they were already in our house stealing his Fruit of the Looms and Brill Cream. I think my Mom finally pointed out to him that it was 4 in the morning and there wasn't anyone up but us, so he finally dropped the club he was going to beat Alice with. DANG IT!!!!
I always wondered why my Dad would insist on leaving at some UN-GODLY hour, but now that I'm older, and have traveled with children, I finally understand it. ANY moment you can get your child to sleep in the car while on a vacation is bonus time. I'm really surprised that instead of water to drink on a trip for us kids, Mom didn't pack like 10 bottles of Nyquil to keep us "medicated" with. It was, however, a pretty traumatic time for a child to leave that early in the morning because it resembled something from either a prison movie or a boot camp movie. I would be sound asleep at 4 in the morning and then the lights in my room would come on and Mom would be telling me to go get in the car to leave. I would stagger like a zombie to my 6in x 6in seating spot on the hump and we would be in Pennsylvania before I finally gathered my senses and realized that we even left. Smart Mom and Dad. . . . . REAL SMART!!!!
Now as far as traveling as a kid, time seemed to move WAY slower than normal time. 8 hours of traveling in a car equaled a week to a child. Throw on top of that the cramped quarters as mentioned before, being shoulder to shoulder with your sworn enemies called your siblings, the lack of ANY form of entertainment, and I am truly surprised that we didn't read about kids going "Lord of the Flies" more and weeding out the herd. I can remember almost every vacation having that moment of insanity. The lack of mobility, entertainment, and having your brother's elbow in your ribs while your sister would accuse you of being on her side would drive me into a frenzy. I would either take to laughing like a madman, fighting both my brother and sister with no regard to my own safety, or singing "This Land is My Land" at the top of my lungs until I let the tension out. Don't ask about that whole singing thing please. I'm not proud of that one.
(Sounding like an old person alert) BEEEEEEEP
For those of you that might read my blog that are under 25, when I say no entertainment, I mean NO ENTERTAINMENT!!!!! We didn't have ANYTHING that resembled the Gameboy, PSP, I-Touch, I-Pod, DVD, or Cell phone. We couldn't lose ourselves in some electronic world that would make the time go faster. I was just on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and while I drove, my wife Linda was watching stuff on YouTube on her phone. Do you know how bad I would have killed to be able to see "Friday" by Rebecca Black just to dull the pain of sitting in a car smashed between my brother and sister with 7 1/2 hours still to go??? You kids have NO IDEA what it was like to have to find your own entertainment on a long car ride. It was sheer torture!!!!
(Old guy leaving now)
As younger kids, Dad would load the entire luggage into the back open area of the Country Squire station wagon, but as we got older, and crankier, he began leaving room in the back for the Alcatraz seat. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Alcatraz seat, let me explain why I call it this. Station wagons at that time, had a fold up seat in the trunk area of the automobile. Now where some station wagons had the bench seat that folded up and had you facing out the back of the vehicle, ours folded out in a manner that gave you two bench seats staring directly at each other looking out the side of the vehicle. I guess Ford decided that it was just plain rude for the child to stare out the back of the car at some poor motorist and chose to have the kid that was exiled to the Alcatraz seat to have to stare out the side of the car, which trust me when I say, you can't see ANYTHING INTERESTING. You don't even get to see all the cool billboards in the opposite direction that the kid that got to see while looking out the back window. THE VIEW SUCKED!!!!
The other reason I call it the Alcatraz seat is because there was usually a mountain of luggage in between you and the rest of the car so you truly felt like you were on an island when you were put back there. Oh, you could hear fun stuff happening from the front end of the car, but you couldn't see it or participate in it because of the lime green suitcase, red and white Igloo cooler, and the saliva stained pillows that were forming a barrier between you and the rest of the car. It was like solitary confinement for an 8 year old. Don't get me wrong, there were times that I enjoyed going back there to get away from my siblings, but you want to talk about boredom?
Then you also had to deal with the size of the seat. I'm not sure who they thought they were marketing this feature to, but you would pretty much have to put two babies back there if you wanted to use both bench seats. Each bench seat was like 3 ft long and 1 1/2 foot deep, but in between the seats for the leg room was like a whopping 8 INCHES. Take a moment to look at 8 inches on a ruler. Please tell me what two mutant kids are going to fit in that area comfortably???? It was like Ford didn't even try this feature out before they put it in this car. They just slapped it in and figured that the parents would figure it out. Heaven forbid you ever got in an accident with your kids in that back seat; safety was NOT an issue with this seat. . . . . WAIT A MINUTE!!!!! I think I just figured out why I was the first one they asked to go back there!!!!
Now that we got the seating out of the way, let's talk about the different dynamics that took place during the travel stage. First off, Dad was the driver. . . .PERIOD. Mom was the navigator. . . . PERIOD. Kids were a constant annoyance to parents . . . . . . PERIOD!!!
It was Dad's only goal to get to the destination in the quickest way possible. You didn't stop for stupid reasons like bathroom breaks or food, you ONLY stopped when you needed gas and everyone in the car had better synchronize their bladders to that cycle. Plus, back then, it was considered a treat if you stopped and got food while traveling from a fast food place. Mom would pack enough fruit and veggies to feed a dozen horses and rabbits and like twenty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for all our eating needs for the trip. Of course, after about the 6th hour of sitting in a cooler with those useless blue cool packs, the jelly would absorb into the peanut butter and you would be left with a mushy sandwich that tasted gross. So the less you dealt with Dad on these trips, the better it was for you in the long run. He was focused on getting us there with the least amount of stops as possible, and he was going to beat last years trip by at least 15 minutes.
Now Mom served two main roles on the trip. She was A) The navigator and B) the buffer between Dad and the kids. You see, long before GPS, you had the MRM (Map Reading Momma). How did this technological marvel work? First off, the MRM was voice activated!!!!! Dad would say where we were going and then Mom would pull out the maps and figure out how we were going to get there. Once again for you younger folks, there were huge sheets of paper that would have lines all over them that showed where all the roads were in a state. And when I say huge. . . . I'm not kidding. I would watch Mom unfold the map and pretty soon almost the entire windshield would be covered up with only a little square left for Dad to see out of to drive. Mom would bark out directions and then try to re-fold the map back into its original form, but that was NEVER going to happen. She would fight the map for like a minute or two, let out an exasperated groan, and then scrunch it together into something that had NO resemblance to the map that was there a minute ago. Of course, as soon as she shoved it under the seat, Dad would ask her to repeat the directions again because he wasn't listening. That's when Mom picked up that club he was going to beat Alice with earlier.
Mom's second job though was much more important. She had to be that buffer between Dad and us kids. I swear there was a blinking light somewhere on the car's dashboard that would flash when Dad was getting aggravated with us kids and putting us in the danger zone. That light would flash and Mom would snap into action by either distracting us kids by pointing out some landmark that we were missing, have us switch seats or exile one of us to Alcatraz, or she would have us sing a song on the spur of the moment. It was like we lived in one of those TV musicals where at the drop of a hat, everyone would break out into a song. I guess it's true that music soothes the savage beast because how she managed to get Dad from killing us sometimes is beyond me. This was Mom's most important role or we would have come home with less people then we left with on a couple of occasions!!!!
We kids, however, took great pride on how much chaos we could create from our little niche in the car and being that we had no real role in the trip, we could put our whole focus on creating that chaos. No matter what time we left, the same thing would happen about 15 minutes into every trip. We would get bored!!! Now boredom could play itself out in SO MANY WAYS in the confines of the car. It could be very simple or mighty complex, but there was no chance we weren't going to make it known that we needed entertainment and we needed it NOW!!!
It would usually start simple between us kids. My brother would lean against me which would push the cooler further into my "special place". I would get annoyed and lean towards my sister to compensate for my brother's rude behavior. She would then lean back into me, pushing against my weight, which in turn would push me back into my brother. He would sense my pushing and lean harder against me until I became a book titled "How to Squish Your Brother", and this book was in between those two stupid bookends called my brother and sister. We would test the waters with each other by fighting for an extra two inches to place our tushies, until one of us would finally snap and throw the first grenade in the "Let's Hack off the Folks" war of 1975. Whoever snapped first, usually my sister, would tattle on whoever they wanted to get into trouble first, which was usually me. "Mom! Scott's leaning on me." to which I would have to defend myself by saying, "Well Mark's leaning on me." to which Mark would play the innocent one and say, "No I'm not." Of course I wasn't going to let this bold faced lie go, so I would have to call him out on it. "He's lying Mom!!! He won't get off me." Then Mark would lean harder against me to make his point and Alice would shove back at me until we would be locked in a battle that no one was going to win. "EVERYONE GET IN YOUR OWN SPOT!!!" Mom would bellow, because there was no way she wanted Dad involved this early on in the trip. We would settle back down for the moment.
For the next few hours we would go from getting along with each other to wanting to kill each other. The worst was when someone decided to "break wind" in such an enclosed area. You were cheek to cheek away from the offending party and they would make sure to raise that cheek in your direction to add to the vapor trail. Of course, the person that did it would bust out laughing while the other two proceeded to hold their breath, wave their hands away from their nose, and tell on the cheek raising stink pot. "Mom! Scott left off a stinker." It was about this time that the smell reached the front seat and Mom and Dad were now involved whether you wanted them to be or not. All the windows would come down and Mom would make a blanket statement like, "If you have to have gas, just hold it."
When we finally got tired of attacking each other, we would turn our attention on Mom with a barrage of questions. "How much longer?" "When are we going to get there?" "When are we going to eat?" "Can we stop and see the World’s Largest Yarn ball?" "What are we going to do when we get there?" "Can we stop so I can pee?" "Can I crawl in the back?" "Why is Dad's vein sticking out of his forehead?”, were all part of the question period of the trip. All three of us had questions, and we wanted answers dang it!!!! Mom would have to field each and every one of those questions as quickly as possible to once again keep Dad focused on the trip. "About 2 hours more." "In about 2 hours." "Do you want a mushy sandwich?" "No." "See your Grandma." "You should have gone an hour ago when we stopped for gas." "If you can find room go ahead." "Because you are asking too many questions and he's close to pulling the car over and killing all three of you." She would answer them all keeping the buffer between us and Dad.
The last part I will talk about on the travel stage is that if we were going to Florida, it meant we would get to stay in a motel at least one night. That was the ultimate experience for a kid. It didn't matter what time at night we pulled into that motel, the first thing out of our mouths when we arrived was, "CAN WE GO SWIMMING???" It didn't matter if it was midnight, 50 degrees outside, and the pool was green, we wanted it so bad we could taste it. There was not enough "No's" in my parent's vocabularies that was going to dissuade us from getting in that pool and they knew it, so they would just say "Yes" and get it over with. We would swim for as long as they would let us, for this is what the vacation was all about. Swimming late at night, going into the freezing motel room, going to sleep three in a bed, waking up at the crack of dawn, putting back on that freezing bathing suit that would make any male an instant girl, and swimming until Dad declared that it was time to get back on the road again. Getting to stay one night in a motel made all the smells, cramped quarters, pushy siblings, gross food, and even the Alcatraz seat worth every painful moment. It was even better than staying at relatives houses because we didn't even have to pick up the towels. I will always remember the greatness that was the motel back in those days.
I could drag this on even further because I still have so many memories from the traveling part of the vacation, but due to length, I will stop it right there. I hope I was able to drag a few memories out of you during this read and I will be tackling the next stage of the vacation in my next "puke". . . . . The Destination!!!
SMILE!!!!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Trip Down Memory Lane Pt. 4 - Vacation Stage 1 - The Preparation
For the three of you that were wondering, the reason I haven't "puked" in awhile is because I was on vacation. I had every intention of doing one before I left, but I think we all know how the week before and the week after your vacation is. You don't feel like doing squat, so that's exactly what I did. SQUAT!!!! I'm amazed that I'm sitting down now to do this because I'm still on vacation mode mentally, but I need to go ahead and get this done before I forget what I was going to "puke" about. After all, I am old, and I forget things pretty quickly now.
As I was laying in the pool wearing my Speedo, I'll let you drink that image in like a fine wine, I began to look back on how the whole vacation experience has changed since I was a kid and figured that this would be a perfect topic in the Trip Down Memory Lane series. I will bring up some memories from past vacations, while making some observations as to how things have changed today. So grab your Atlas, highlight your route, and join me on another Trip Down Memory Lane!!! This time, we are GOING ON VACATION!!!!
When I was a kid, back in the 70's for those that are curious, vacations were always such a huge event in our lives. We couldn't wait for the summer to roll around because we knew we were going to load up the station wagon and head to either Long Island, NY to see my Uncle and Grandma, or to Stuart, Fl to see my Uncle. Both destinations held their own enticements. New York meant Fire Island Beaches, use of the neighbor's above ground pool for the duration of our trip, and a visit to New York City. Florida meant beaches, hotel stays, and a visit to Disney World in Orlando. It was win/win as far as I was concerned. However, the destination wasn't the only part of what made it an interesting trip. There were so many components that made up this thing we all called VACATION so I'm going to break it up into these four different stages:
1. Preparation
2. Traveling
3. The Destination
4. The Trip Home
*Authors note* I will probably break this into four different "pukes" also, because I just finished the first stage and realized that if I did all four stages in one, it would be the size of War and Peace. I'm doing this for your own good, trust me!!!
Let us start with the preparation. Days before you ever pulled out of that driveway, there were so many tasks that needed to get accomplished. As a kid, I found it in my best interest to stay the heck out of my parent’s way during this time in fear that they would either kill me or send me to the neighbors to stay and then forget to take me with them. Hey, I've seen "Home Alone" so I know it could happen.
Now in my family, my Dad was a worrier so he would spend the prep time by spouting different scenarios that would all end up in the loss of everything we ever owned. Here are a few examples:
"If we don't have the neighbors pick up our mail, the entire world will know that we are gone and someone will break in and steal all our stuff."
"I need to make sure that I turn off the pilot light on the water heater, or our house will burn to the ground and we will have NOTHING to come home to."
"I need to stare under the hood of the car and act like I know what I'm looking at making sure the car is safe to travel because I don't want to break down in the middle of nowhere."
"We need to stop the newspaper from coming, or a bunch of arsonists will know we aren't home and break in, steal all our stuff, and THEN burn our house to the ground. Then once I return home and see it, I will wreck the car due to the shock of it all." (This one covered all the bases in the doomsday prophecy)
Mom, however, would worry more about the trip itself and the things that the family was going to need. Here are a few things that you could hear come out of her mouth:
"I need to make sure I pack enough sun block. I don't want my kids getting burnt to a crisp at the beach."
"I need to go to the grocery store and pick up lunch meat and snacks to make sure everyone doesn't starve to death on that 8 hour trip to New York."
"We need games!!! I need to find games for the kids so Fred (my father) doesn't get so mad at them making noise that he actually DOES pull the car over and KILL all the children. How would I ever explain that?" (Trust me. There were plenty of times I thought this was going to happen. I was just praying that it would be either my brother or sister so I could have more room in the car.)
"We can't forget the kids pillows because either they will use them to sleep in the car, or Fred will have me place them over the kids faces to shut them up while he drives."
Dad's priorities = Car safety and House safety
Mom's priorities = Kids safety and packing.
Each parent knew their role in this and neither was going to step on the others toes during this time.
Packing was such a huge part of this stage, and it usually tended to fall on Mom's plate as her responsibility. So being a good leader, she would try to delegate the packing duties to each child. Now I don't know about you, but I have found that telling a young kid, say under 12, to pack for a trip is the most useless thing you can do as a parent. I can remember my Mom telling me to go pack myself and I would grab my little suitcase and get it done in like 42 seconds because I was efficient! Of course, I would end up with 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of dress pants for church, 3 shirts (none of which went with my dress pants), 2 pairs of socks (not a one would match), 0 pair of underwear (because I knew I was going to have one pair on when we left and I only needed those to get me through. Wear them normal for half the time, and then turn them inside out for the rest of the time. Genius!!! I would also only have one shoe and an assortment of useless crap that I wasn't going to be able to live without during my time away. This was all supposed to last me for the 10 days we were going to be gone. And to make matters worse, I wouldn't even bother to grab clean clothes. I would just grab them off the floor because those were my favorites that I wore all the time. Of course, Mom wouldn't check my suitcase until the day we were leaving to discover that my packing skills resembled that of the "special" kid that lived down the street that you didn't make eye contact with unless you wanted your leg humped. She would end up yelling at me asking me, "Just what I was thinking?" and end up doing it herself anyways. HEY! She should have known better than to ask a kid to pack their selves and done it herself in the first place!!!
All this preparation was such a stressful time because everyone just wanted to leave, but you had all this crap to do before you could even pull out of the driveway. So when the actual day of the departure would come, I would usually just run to the car and sit there to stay out of the way of the whirlwind that was about to take place. Mom would scream directions at us kids and Dad would be in charge of packing the car. Talk about a dictatorship!!!! I made the mistake once, only ONCE, of putting my little suitcase in the car on my own. You would have thought I just broke into the house, stole everything, torched the place, while wrecking our car, by the reaction of Adolf Sweitzer the Communist Packing Nazi. Every square inch had to be placed by Dad, and I do mean HAD TO. It was like a live game of Tetris to him. We would hand him a square suitcase and a rectangular cooler and it became his task to place them next to the L shaped chair and the kids pillows so that there was not ONE INCH of wasted space. You could watch him stand back and stare at the packing like he was Einstein trying to figure out E=MC2.
"If I move the chair 2 inches to the left, I can place the cooler right next to it at a 40 degree angle which will leave me 6 extra inches on the left side of the pillows so we can put the camera bag right there. If I put the camera bag on its side, I will still have 2 inches to put something else."
It was such an exact science to him and God bless the soul that screwed with that design. Heaven forbid if Mom would try to sneak something in at the end. This would cause Dad's forehead to turn red and make him have to redo the pyramid of items so he could fit the thermos of coffee between the camera bag and the pillows. My Dad never cussed, but it was during these times that if he did, I would have learned a whole lot of interesting words to take back to school with me in the Fall. Dang it! Missed opportunities!!!!
With the prep work out of the way, the car loaded, the kids in their respected 6in x 6in spots, Mom in the passenger seat, and Dad behind the wheel it was surely time to leave on vacation right???? WRONG!!!! You would pull out of the driveway and Dad would ask Mom if she remembered to unplug EVERY appliance in the house because he didn't want there to be a short which would cause a fire and burn everything to the ground. (Doomsday prophecy) Mom would usually say yes, but would hesitate just long enough to throw doubt into the air. Dad would say, "Are you sure???" and Mom would have to say "I'm pretty sure I did, but I can't remember if I unplugged the toaster." So now just 35 seconds up the road, Dad would slam on the breaks, let out a noise that sounded like a growl, turn the car around in your neighbor’s driveway, all to go back and check the stupid toaster. We kids knew better than to say a single word during this time because we would end up DEAD if we got involved. Mom would rush in and recheck every appliance and then come back out and confirm she did unplug the toaster. I'm pretty sure she had forgotten to unplug it, but there was NO CHANCE she was going to admit it to Dad because then he would have to double check all the appliances himself.
With Mom now back in the car, every appliance unplugged, certainly it was time for the vacation to begin . . . right? WRONG!!!!! Once that car was put in reverse, your sister would spout out those 7 words of doom that would set the tone for the remainder of the trip. "I have to go to the bathroom." Oh, the bane in my father's ears. Anytime a trip was interrupted by a trip to the bathroom, my father would die a little bit inside. I'm guilty of this today myself and I have a rule. "You will only eat when the car has to eat and you will only have to go to the bathroom when I have to go to the bathroom!!!!!!" Alas, women have bladders the size of a peanut, so I have felt Dad's pain time and time again over the years in my own travel adventures. I have learned that to a woman, 1 cup of water equals 14 gallons of urine. More on this later though.
Once my sister said those 7 words, we would wait for my Dad's head to split open and watch the fire and brimstone spill out of his head engulfing my sister in flames until all that remained of her was just a small pile of ashes. I would then open the car door, blow her ashes off the seat, and then scoot my little cute behind over so I would have more room during the trip. Instead of this wonderful mental image, we would get the whole, "I told you to go before we left!!!" Followed by, "I didn't have to go then." My Father would then lower his head on to the steering wheel and tell her to hurry up. Alice would run into the house and take care of her business while we would just sit there in complete silence knowing that whoever broke that silence, would surely die. Alice would then run back and get into the car which would prompt Dad to ask everyone in the car, "Does ANYONE else have to go?" By that time, even if I did have to go so bad that my eyes were watering, I would have just peed myself and sat there in my own urine soaked Wranglers for the next 8 hours because there was NO WAY I was going to be the one to hold this trip up any further. Out of sheer terror, no one would object, so it was finally time to really leave and Dad would announce "WE'RE OFF!" Which would take us to our next stage in this adventure . . . . . . . . .
Traveling
(to be continued in the next "puke")
As I was laying in the pool wearing my Speedo, I'll let you drink that image in like a fine wine, I began to look back on how the whole vacation experience has changed since I was a kid and figured that this would be a perfect topic in the Trip Down Memory Lane series. I will bring up some memories from past vacations, while making some observations as to how things have changed today. So grab your Atlas, highlight your route, and join me on another Trip Down Memory Lane!!! This time, we are GOING ON VACATION!!!!
When I was a kid, back in the 70's for those that are curious, vacations were always such a huge event in our lives. We couldn't wait for the summer to roll around because we knew we were going to load up the station wagon and head to either Long Island, NY to see my Uncle and Grandma, or to Stuart, Fl to see my Uncle. Both destinations held their own enticements. New York meant Fire Island Beaches, use of the neighbor's above ground pool for the duration of our trip, and a visit to New York City. Florida meant beaches, hotel stays, and a visit to Disney World in Orlando. It was win/win as far as I was concerned. However, the destination wasn't the only part of what made it an interesting trip. There were so many components that made up this thing we all called VACATION so I'm going to break it up into these four different stages:
1. Preparation
2. Traveling
3. The Destination
4. The Trip Home
*Authors note* I will probably break this into four different "pukes" also, because I just finished the first stage and realized that if I did all four stages in one, it would be the size of War and Peace. I'm doing this for your own good, trust me!!!
Let us start with the preparation. Days before you ever pulled out of that driveway, there were so many tasks that needed to get accomplished. As a kid, I found it in my best interest to stay the heck out of my parent’s way during this time in fear that they would either kill me or send me to the neighbors to stay and then forget to take me with them. Hey, I've seen "Home Alone" so I know it could happen.
Now in my family, my Dad was a worrier so he would spend the prep time by spouting different scenarios that would all end up in the loss of everything we ever owned. Here are a few examples:
"If we don't have the neighbors pick up our mail, the entire world will know that we are gone and someone will break in and steal all our stuff."
"I need to make sure that I turn off the pilot light on the water heater, or our house will burn to the ground and we will have NOTHING to come home to."
"I need to stare under the hood of the car and act like I know what I'm looking at making sure the car is safe to travel because I don't want to break down in the middle of nowhere."
"We need to stop the newspaper from coming, or a bunch of arsonists will know we aren't home and break in, steal all our stuff, and THEN burn our house to the ground. Then once I return home and see it, I will wreck the car due to the shock of it all." (This one covered all the bases in the doomsday prophecy)
Mom, however, would worry more about the trip itself and the things that the family was going to need. Here are a few things that you could hear come out of her mouth:
"I need to make sure I pack enough sun block. I don't want my kids getting burnt to a crisp at the beach."
"I need to go to the grocery store and pick up lunch meat and snacks to make sure everyone doesn't starve to death on that 8 hour trip to New York."
"We need games!!! I need to find games for the kids so Fred (my father) doesn't get so mad at them making noise that he actually DOES pull the car over and KILL all the children. How would I ever explain that?" (Trust me. There were plenty of times I thought this was going to happen. I was just praying that it would be either my brother or sister so I could have more room in the car.)
"We can't forget the kids pillows because either they will use them to sleep in the car, or Fred will have me place them over the kids faces to shut them up while he drives."
Dad's priorities = Car safety and House safety
Mom's priorities = Kids safety and packing.
Each parent knew their role in this and neither was going to step on the others toes during this time.
Packing was such a huge part of this stage, and it usually tended to fall on Mom's plate as her responsibility. So being a good leader, she would try to delegate the packing duties to each child. Now I don't know about you, but I have found that telling a young kid, say under 12, to pack for a trip is the most useless thing you can do as a parent. I can remember my Mom telling me to go pack myself and I would grab my little suitcase and get it done in like 42 seconds because I was efficient! Of course, I would end up with 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of dress pants for church, 3 shirts (none of which went with my dress pants), 2 pairs of socks (not a one would match), 0 pair of underwear (because I knew I was going to have one pair on when we left and I only needed those to get me through. Wear them normal for half the time, and then turn them inside out for the rest of the time. Genius!!! I would also only have one shoe and an assortment of useless crap that I wasn't going to be able to live without during my time away. This was all supposed to last me for the 10 days we were going to be gone. And to make matters worse, I wouldn't even bother to grab clean clothes. I would just grab them off the floor because those were my favorites that I wore all the time. Of course, Mom wouldn't check my suitcase until the day we were leaving to discover that my packing skills resembled that of the "special" kid that lived down the street that you didn't make eye contact with unless you wanted your leg humped. She would end up yelling at me asking me, "Just what I was thinking?" and end up doing it herself anyways. HEY! She should have known better than to ask a kid to pack their selves and done it herself in the first place!!!
All this preparation was such a stressful time because everyone just wanted to leave, but you had all this crap to do before you could even pull out of the driveway. So when the actual day of the departure would come, I would usually just run to the car and sit there to stay out of the way of the whirlwind that was about to take place. Mom would scream directions at us kids and Dad would be in charge of packing the car. Talk about a dictatorship!!!! I made the mistake once, only ONCE, of putting my little suitcase in the car on my own. You would have thought I just broke into the house, stole everything, torched the place, while wrecking our car, by the reaction of Adolf Sweitzer the Communist Packing Nazi. Every square inch had to be placed by Dad, and I do mean HAD TO. It was like a live game of Tetris to him. We would hand him a square suitcase and a rectangular cooler and it became his task to place them next to the L shaped chair and the kids pillows so that there was not ONE INCH of wasted space. You could watch him stand back and stare at the packing like he was Einstein trying to figure out E=MC2.
"If I move the chair 2 inches to the left, I can place the cooler right next to it at a 40 degree angle which will leave me 6 extra inches on the left side of the pillows so we can put the camera bag right there. If I put the camera bag on its side, I will still have 2 inches to put something else."
It was such an exact science to him and God bless the soul that screwed with that design. Heaven forbid if Mom would try to sneak something in at the end. This would cause Dad's forehead to turn red and make him have to redo the pyramid of items so he could fit the thermos of coffee between the camera bag and the pillows. My Dad never cussed, but it was during these times that if he did, I would have learned a whole lot of interesting words to take back to school with me in the Fall. Dang it! Missed opportunities!!!!
With the prep work out of the way, the car loaded, the kids in their respected 6in x 6in spots, Mom in the passenger seat, and Dad behind the wheel it was surely time to leave on vacation right???? WRONG!!!! You would pull out of the driveway and Dad would ask Mom if she remembered to unplug EVERY appliance in the house because he didn't want there to be a short which would cause a fire and burn everything to the ground. (Doomsday prophecy) Mom would usually say yes, but would hesitate just long enough to throw doubt into the air. Dad would say, "Are you sure???" and Mom would have to say "I'm pretty sure I did, but I can't remember if I unplugged the toaster." So now just 35 seconds up the road, Dad would slam on the breaks, let out a noise that sounded like a growl, turn the car around in your neighbor’s driveway, all to go back and check the stupid toaster. We kids knew better than to say a single word during this time because we would end up DEAD if we got involved. Mom would rush in and recheck every appliance and then come back out and confirm she did unplug the toaster. I'm pretty sure she had forgotten to unplug it, but there was NO CHANCE she was going to admit it to Dad because then he would have to double check all the appliances himself.
With Mom now back in the car, every appliance unplugged, certainly it was time for the vacation to begin . . . right? WRONG!!!!! Once that car was put in reverse, your sister would spout out those 7 words of doom that would set the tone for the remainder of the trip. "I have to go to the bathroom." Oh, the bane in my father's ears. Anytime a trip was interrupted by a trip to the bathroom, my father would die a little bit inside. I'm guilty of this today myself and I have a rule. "You will only eat when the car has to eat and you will only have to go to the bathroom when I have to go to the bathroom!!!!!!" Alas, women have bladders the size of a peanut, so I have felt Dad's pain time and time again over the years in my own travel adventures. I have learned that to a woman, 1 cup of water equals 14 gallons of urine. More on this later though.
Once my sister said those 7 words, we would wait for my Dad's head to split open and watch the fire and brimstone spill out of his head engulfing my sister in flames until all that remained of her was just a small pile of ashes. I would then open the car door, blow her ashes off the seat, and then scoot my little cute behind over so I would have more room during the trip. Instead of this wonderful mental image, we would get the whole, "I told you to go before we left!!!" Followed by, "I didn't have to go then." My Father would then lower his head on to the steering wheel and tell her to hurry up. Alice would run into the house and take care of her business while we would just sit there in complete silence knowing that whoever broke that silence, would surely die. Alice would then run back and get into the car which would prompt Dad to ask everyone in the car, "Does ANYONE else have to go?" By that time, even if I did have to go so bad that my eyes were watering, I would have just peed myself and sat there in my own urine soaked Wranglers for the next 8 hours because there was NO WAY I was going to be the one to hold this trip up any further. Out of sheer terror, no one would object, so it was finally time to really leave and Dad would announce "WE'RE OFF!" Which would take us to our next stage in this adventure . . . . . . . . .
Traveling
(to be continued in the next "puke")
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