Vacation 1998 Prologue

GenePool Humor

Vacation 1998

Prologue: What Doesn't Kill You the First Time Deserves A Second Shot

Well, it's that time of year again.

You may recall that at around this time last year my family and I embarked on a nine day vacation to Florida and the Bahamas. You may also recall that it was a vacation that could only have been made worse by the introduction of stray gunfire. So many things went wrong on last year's vacation that D.H. Lawrence could have written an account of it and made it funny. I contracted walking pneumonia on this vacation and it actually IMPROVED things. That's how bad it was.

So of course, we're doing it again this year.

Well, not all of it. We're not going to the Bahamas, or Ft. Lauderdale, we're not renting any cars, and we're staying the hell away from cruise ships. But we ARE going to Disneyworld.

Why go to Florida in August, again, when it was so humid last year? We could have gone in May, June, or July, after all, and then we would have even had a chance to watch some of the exciting brush fires they had down there. The answer is, I have no idea. We just are. However, since we are actually staying on the grounds-- at one of the Disney resorts-- we're not going to be far from a variety of swimming pools that we will probably be spending a good deal of time lounging about in. This is the plan, at least. This plan might last just about as long as it takes the children to realize they have a full week to ride Space Mountain from sunrise to sunset.

Then again, the swimming pools will be right outside our room, and it is an established fact that for a child, nothing is more desirous than what happens to be directly in front of them at any given time. Last year when leaving Ft. Lauderdale to drive to Orlando Becky and Tim pitched a fit that lasted two hours because we didn't stop and spend the day at the circus we passed on our way out of town. It didn't matter that we were passing up the circus to go to Disneyworld. So I don't know yet how this is all going to play out once we get there, but we're hoping the pools are part of the deal.

I do know that I need a vacation. I'm getting surly. I've taken to giving tourists bad directions intentionally just for fun. (What, it's my fault elderly nuns can't read a map?) A good sign that I'm wearing down is when my sense of humor starts to get, for wont of a better term, disturbing. This morning the YMCA we belong to called to inform us that Deb's water aerobics class was cancelled. I was told by this unsuspecting young woman on the other end of the phone that the indoor pool was closed for the day. "Do you still have to get the body out?" I asked. At work I overheard two female co-workers discussing a name change undertaken by one of the bank customers. In this particular case a woman had had an operation to become a man, and my fellow employees felt that while an operation to change a man into a woman could at least be theorized, they had no idea how one could have an operation to successfully change oneself into a man. I offered that perhaps the doctors just blew real hard into the mouth of the patient.

So it's not necessarily safe to be around me. What I find funny when I'm in this sort of mood generally causes other people to act horrified for some reason. In fact, light, inoffensive, easy-to-read humor like this column here is pretty tough to pull off. So you damn well better laugh.

We are making a concerted effort to avoid the errors that made our vacation last year less-than-perfect. We bought luggage, for one thing. Four big-ass bags. With wheels. And since the bags are so big we're saving on airfare too, because one of them is big enough to hold Tim.

We're flying straight to Orlando, taking a taxi straight to Disney, and we're not leaving the grounds for seven days. Everything is pre-paid, including the food. We started doing the laundry and some of the packing three days ago, and we don't leave for another four days. We might actually be prepared.

I'm optimistic. And a little desperate. If we can't do THIS one right, I don't think there's any hope for us.

I will be taking notes, as before. With luck, I wont have to take too many.