”
No man deeds a vacation so much as a man who has just had
one.
”
– Elbert Hubbard
“No man deeds a vacation so much as a man who has just had one.”
– Elbert Hubbard
We recently returned from our summer vacation – and I can tell you that another vacation would be nice. The problem is, when you have a child, summer vacation isn’t really a vacation at all.
Before Junior came along, I really loved vacations. We would fly someplace nice and quiet with sandy beaches and no children running around. Harry and I would lie on a beach or snorkel or walk or do anything we darned well pleased. We’d eat, drink and be merry.
That’s not what happens in a kid vacation. It’s true. Vacations with the child are much different
than vacations without the child. First there’s the whole vacation preparation thing. Used to be you just dumped a bathing suit and a contact lens case into an overnight bag and flew off to a beach.
But ever since Junior came along, vacation preparation is a bit more complicated. I don’t know what planet Harry and Junior live on – but neither one of them could possibly pack a suitcase for a visit to Earth.
For one thing, Harry always packs too little. I ask you – does anyone really believe it’s possible to go away for eight days with only four T-shirts, a couple pairs of shorts and some underwear? I swear to you, that’s what Harry tried to pack. He didn’t even have socks or a toothbrush, for pete’s sake.
And Junior? Junior didn’t even have clothes in his suitcase – he had 4 bazillion NASCAR trading cards, his Playstation Portable and every game he owned, plus two chargers for the PSP in case he lost one on the trip.
So, I didn’t have any choice. I packed Junior and Harry. I had to. I couldn’t spend an entire vacation trying to run around and find someplace to wash their clothes – especially since Junior didn’t pack any at all. He’d be running around naked while I’d be spending precious relaxation time at a laundromat trying to shove quarters into a machine. So I filled a couple suitcases with enough changes of clothing to last us a month or so. And of course, before I packed all those clothes, I had to do about twenty loads of laundry to make sure they were clean.
Unfortuantely, packing for a family trip doesn’t stop with clothing and toothbrushes. No, when you travel with a child, you must also pack food. That’s because a child cannot go 20 minutes without a snack. And realistically, you can’t just stop the car in every town to fill the kid up – and airline food isn’t just bad, it doesn’t exist on some airlines.
So, I packed up the contents of the pantry and fridge and we were finally set to leave for vacation. Now at this point, you’d think I’d be relaxed. After all, we were on vacation, right? Um, wrong. For one thing, I was totally exhausted from spending a month packing and preparing for a weeklong trip.
And for another thing, kid vacations are different from adult vacations. You can’t go someplace quiet. I don’t care how lovely the water is, a child will not spend seven days on a beach working on his tan. It just doesn’t happen. Nor will they sit quietly on the beach reading trashy novels. OK, that’s mainly because kids aren’t usually allowed to read trashy novels – but still. A kid just doesn’t sit. At least my kid doesn’t.
So to amuse the child, we went to an amusement park. I admit that I love amusement parks. I could move into Disneyland and I would truly be the happiest person on earth. Really. I
love the rides, the excitement, the people – heck, I even love the darned churros.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much amusement at an amusement park in August. In fact, there’s so little amusement and so many long lines of whining kids and exhausted adults that in August all amusement parks should officially change their names to “whiny parks.”
That way everybody knows ahead of time that their vacations are going to require earplugs and a whole lot of patience. Truthfully, if I lived in Disneyland – in August, I’d move out and live on a beach for a month.
But we went. And we survived – we were even amused at times. But I really could use a week on a beach with a trashy novel to recover.
