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!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment