"I think you're all fucked in the head. We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun. I'm gonna have fun and you're gonna have fun. We're all gonna have so much fucking fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our god damn smiles. You'll be whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of you're assholes! I gotta be crazy! I'm on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy Shit!"
~Clark Griswold in Vacation
Family vacations...They begin in a mystery and end in a mystery. Some of my favorite memories consist of past family vacations. The funny incidents, the little mishaps, etc. And whenever I want to revisit those memories and go off the rails on a crazy train, I'll just shut my eyes and I'm in Heaven/Hell/The Comedy Store once again...
Whenever most people travel with family they find out whether they like someone or hate them. Not in my family. There is no time for emotions when you are dealing with a medical crisis. And by medical crisis I mean watching the car in front of you running into a mountain or having the whole world watch you fall in the street.
Oh where oh where do I begin? The funny stuff or the events that led to scrapes and bruises? I will start with the funny stuff, because the escapades in injury turned out to be humorous as well.
Those that say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip. I have flown so much in my life that I don't care about the window seat anymore, however, my family unit and I didn't fly that much to our vacation destinations. Apparently, my father thought it would be a much better idea to torpedo us into the car and send us on our way. Trust me when I say that hours and hours on the open road bring out some murderous tendencies in you. I once walked into my gynecologists office and told the nurse that I was a homicidal maniac because I was hormonal. LIE! I think it was a pre-existing condition brought on by family vacations. I am claustrophobic. What can I say. You can't confine me in a small space with anybody for a significant period of time. Not even Brad Pitt.
I am sure we have all had somebody bang on our front door in the middle of the morning. Well at least you have if you are a desirable female. That middle of the morning nuisance was taken to a whole different level on one of my family vacations. Some family crazier than mine woke us up by banging on our tent. It was a case of mistaken identity, because we were not who they were looking for. My family was crazy, but they were also proper. We met other families for dinner, not for campground trips. The intruders were very apologetic. I am not sure what it was that made them want to invite us to a kumbayah sing-a-long around the campfire the next night. It could have been the sheer terror they felt when my eyes spit nails because I had awoken from a deep slumber infused with visions of the Hardy Boys or maybe they just felt like complete morons in general. Needless to say I didn't make it to the campground choir rehearsal even though the invite was pretty much received as they were down on their knees begging for mercy. I had a dinner date with the ducks which entailed me feeding them bread and Honeycomb cereal. Actually that was the only time I was allowed to eat sugary food that was bad for me. My grandmother was the one who packed the cereal for us. I shared some with the ducks, but I sneaked the rest. I thought I had hit the effin' jackpot! Speaking of food, I got in big trouble over food on one of our vacations. I believe we were somewhere between Illinois and Hell. We had stopped off at a Wendy's and I pitched a fit because I ordered a hamburger without ketchup and what did I receive? A hamburger with ketchup. I am okay with ketchup with fries, but I don't like it touching my meat or my bun. It just reminds me of something highly inappropriate. My father was highly annoyed so he banned me from going to the hotel pool after dinner. I was devastated. I cried and cried as if somebody had kidnapped my grandmother. To this day I don't know what my damage entailed. While I didn't have a pool in my backyard, I had access to many pools and usually complained because I was tired of being in them. I had my choice of the YMCA, the yacht club and the country club pools on any given day. My mother would drop me off at swimming lessons and I would catch a ride home with every kid I knew who magically got an ear infection just to have my mother take me right back. She pulled that with bible school too. If there were 2 things she wanted for me it was for me to know how to swim and know the bible. Did she want me to be a christian athlete or be saved when I drowned? Maybe both. As far as the hotel cess pool went I must have just had this strong urge to mix and mingle and do underwater handstands with trailer trash from the 50 different states.
Enough fun. Bring on the physical pain! There we were. Cruising along in the car in the Tennessee mountains. My sister and I were singing at top of our lungs to the radio. "Don't Go Away Mad" by Motley Crue was playing. Imagine Ralphie and Randy singing on the way to pick out a Christmas tree in "A Christmas Story". Our singing was like most heavy metal. It was loud and obnoxious, but we were so proud. I overheard my father say, "that guy has lost it". I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did I care. I was in the middle of the best karaoke performance of my life! Whether I liked it or not, I very quickly found out what my father was talking about. The car ahead of us, veered off into the median and then came back and shot right in front of us and hit the side of the mountain. Of course, we stopped to help. Everyone was okay, however, I think one of the boys broke his glasses and lost a few teeth. I remember telling the kid that I had a good orthodontist he could use. I spent so much time with that orthodontist that it is amazing that my parents could still send me to college since my father paid for all of his kids to go to college. And not just any college. He paid for them to go to Harvard and Yale. I just got to go to Florida State, however, now that I think about it that had nothing to do with money. Could have been my grades. To this day, nobody believes that story. I told that story when I was 19 outside of a nightclub to a bunch of my friends who had just dropped a bunch of acid and apparently it sent them on the worst trip of their life.
My life would not be complete without having to make a trip to the hospital on vacation. In my early 30's my parental units invited me to go to Chicago with them. I was "rushing" on Rush Street during rush hour. Literally. I was walking really fast, because I was in a hurry to meet my parents for dinner. I tripped and fell over a curb and there I went. Of course everyone was gasping in horror, however, I picked myself up, exclaimed that I was okay and kept on going. Once I reached the restaurant, I ordered 3 vodka concoctions and when that didn't work I had to go to the hospital/emergency room. There is nothing like hobbling down Michigan Avenue at 1 a.m. to pick up your Vicodin prescription at the pharmacy. When we left a few days later I decided to go to a nearby florist and pick out some flowers for myself to take on the airplane with me. As I drug myself through the airport with a sling on one arm and a bouquet of flowers hanging out of the other my mother told me that I resembled a tore down homecoming queen/Elizabeth Taylor. I am guessing that refusing to take off my newest pair of Christian Dior shades helped me achieve haggard and worn out celebrity status in my mother's eyes. The plane ride home was the cake topper. I had finished off my Vicodin the night before, because I needed something to ease the pain of my father's incessant snoring. I should have stomached the snoring, because I definitely couldn't stomach anything else the next day. I kept puking in that bag on the plane and my mother told me I couldn't have anymore to eat. She went even further by telling the airline attendant that I could not have anymore snacks. What was I? 12? This is precisely why I now agree with the person that said you should not vacate with your parents as an adult child. In my mind I yanked her by the hair, grabbed her by the throat and drug her down the aisle while screaming that no matter what I would be puking so I might as well have something to puke up. During a layover, my father grabbed a hot dog. It wasn't just any hot dog. It was smothered in onions. I wanted to kill him and I almost did. If looks could kill I would have received my inheritance a long time ago. Once we were almost home, I told my parents I wanted to die. At that point they were happy to oblige. My mother said they could tie me to a tree in the back yard and shoot me. She ended up feeding me salty crackers and ginger ale and put "Clueless" in the DVD player. Somehow, that was the cure I needed.
It actually took me several years to get over that injury. My doctor told me that at my age people are not meant to throw themselves down on the pavement in front of moving cars. With another family vacation approaching, I am hoping and praying that I come back unscathed. We are going to the mountains in Tennessee and taking a trip to Dollywood. Since my 16 month old nephew is involved, apparently Dollywood is a test run for Disney World. I can only hope that I will find a float so I can rest between Dolly's voluptuousness. I have a feeling though that I will be walking away needing a vacation because I just had one.
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