The Family Vacation

One of the great afflictions visited upon Americans, especially men, is the advent of a family vacation. It’s now that time of year. The torture chambers are heating up.

A genius coined the cliché, “Nothing’s fun for the whole family.” The clue came from Clark Griswold, “This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest, a quest for fun. I’m gonna have fun and you’re gonna have fun.” Fun is a mandate!

Remember last summer’s family vacation? The time you left La-Z-Boy comfort to endure a pilgrimage to the beach, or mountains, or, heaven forbid, a Disney cruise. How’d that work out for you? Still tortured by the nightmare? You’re not alone.

Past pain has no recall. Face it; leaving home is tough, especially for men. They toil late into the night preparing for the trip, praying for divine intercession. Asking for anything to cancel the agony of a grueling road trip.

But here you are, planning another one. You plead, “But honey, we can’t afford to be gone a week.” It’s a weak lament, but you give it a shot.

Your wife snaps, “Really? Then you decide. It’s divorce or murder. These children are driving me insane. I’m not putting up with them another minute. You stay home with them. I’ll go to the beach.”

That’s pretty much how it goes. So you book the trip, send the deposit, clock out at work. The office staff offers condolences. You hear whispers in the background, “Poor man, he might not survive this one.”

You’re running late, as usual. A last-minute gym workout. A short jog. The last pull from the ATM. You finally get home. You look at the foot-high grass, remember the homeowner’s association citation. You curse it. Gotta mow it now. The mower won’t start. You leave it in disgust, an appetizer for the kudzu.

Inside your home you hear shouts. Glass breaks. Doors slam.Your skin crawls. Luggage is piled at the back door. You haul it out, cram it into the SUV, strap bikes to the roof and shove the dog inside. The family watches your manic efforts. Nobody speaks. It begins to rain.

Like a family of itinerant gypsies you speed to the interstate. You know the rule: arrive after dark at posh resorts. Maybe nobody will remember your band of urban misfits.

The interstate is a parking lot. Nothing moves. You squeeze into a slot in the slow lane. The AC quits. An hour to get two miles. Your wife complains. Back-seat voices whine, “How much longer? We’re hungry.” Minutes crawl by like hours.

An eternity passes in agonizing traffic. Ahead in the darkness the Yellow Arch appears. They see it. “Drive thru, drive thru.” Their shrill voices split your ears. You queue up with other vacationers. The takeaway line stretches for miles.

Hours drag by. Lamentations wail from the back seats, “Are we there yet? I need to use the bathroom.” You try to Zen out as you drive through the darkness. You remove the crumpled picture of the vacation nirvana you clipped from the brochure, toss it out the window.

Blue lights appear in the rear view. They summons you over. The officer drags a crumpled bike to your door. You beg forgiveness; promise a better tie job next time. Your wife is writing something. You glimpse the words, “Last will and.…”

You finally arrive after what seems like a week inside the insufferably stuffy car. Beach front condo. First class. Relief at last. The family bolts from the car, rushes inside, cranks the AC to freezing. The TV blasts. It’s just you and the luggage.

Some teenagers straggle by. They help unload. Their efforts cost a crisp Ben Franklin. Somehow you find a bed, collapse into a coma for three straight days. You finally wake up. You forget the misery, grab your golf sticks, find a course. Things start looking up.

The vacation passes quickly. Your budget is blown. So what? Everyone had fun. Wife got a tan, children made friends, weather was perfect. You played golf. Life is good. Time to go home while you’re ahead.

Such are the rituals of family vacations. Somehow we survive, refreshed from the short respite. Home looks good again. We promise ourselves to never again endure such trauma. Utter nonsense.

Family vacations…buy the ticket, take the ride, and make some memories.


Bud Hearn
May 22, 2015

Traveling With Women

My wife and a group of her friends were making a weekend trip for a house tour in Madison, Georgia. A weekend, mind you. There were three riding together. When I arrived, the trunk was open. I wondered how their combine ‘weekend’ luggage would fit in it. Somehow it all did. It reminded me of an article I wrote four years ago on the eve of a two-week trip to France. What follows are the details of that experience.

**********

He comes home from work. His wife is standing in the carport. The car trunk’s open. She has in her hands a measuring tape, a calculator and a list.

“Hi, whatcha doing?” he says. But he already knows. She’s preparing for their trip.

She answers, “I’m computing the cubic feet of this trunk to see if our luggage will fit. Based on my metrics, you’re pretty much outta luck. There’s no room for your luggage.”

What’s new, he thinks. He wants to argue, but why? He knows the results. All men do. He thinks of where it all went wrong. It was the new addition to the house, he remembers. It was added to accommodate her wardrobe. Her shoe rack alone was sufficient to jump-start a shoe emporium. He had once suggested this. Bad mistake!

She lives to travel. Mention ‘trip,’ and she says ‘when?’ She even named the dog Trip. Volumes of travel magazines are stacked in the bookcases. A “Traveling for Dummies” book, dog-eared and underlined, lies next to a world globe with pins sticking from it. He wonders if her parents were gypsies. He recalls having once asked her. He recorded her response in his journal under the heading of ‘Questions by a Fool’.

For two months she had been preparing for this trip. The process is always the same. It begins with The List. It consumes weeks and totally disrupts all normal household life. “What’s for dinner?” is met with silence.

The List is a computerized inventory of all her possessions. He once commented that it was longer than War and Peace, an unwise analogy as it turned out. He decided not to do this again.

After The List comes the logistics phase. This is a complex operation...ask any man who has traveled with a woman. It requires a great deal of time and a very large home. The List cannot match outfits and shoes, coordinate colors, select jewelry. So clothes must be laid out for proper combinations. They occupy all flat surfaces in the house, including the beds. He sleeps in his car.

This goes on for weeks. The vagabond clothes are arranged, rearranged, sorted, rejected and replaced. He wonders if clothes have feelings when they become ‘trip rejects,’ overlooked because of age, and substituted with new, more spiffy outfits. He pities the derelict garments. He extrapolates this thought, wondering if one day he’ll be one of her castoffs. Maybe. He smiles at the possibility.

Time gets short. She becomes manic. She now moves with warp speed. She’s packing medicines and cosmetics. The bathroom bulges with bottles, tubes, lotions, pills, powders and beauty products. It resembles an aisle at Walgreen’s. He brushes his teeth at the lawn spigot. He bathes in the pool.

Finally, she’s packed. “What are you taking?” she asks. He visits his cubicle, takes out a few shirts, pants and blue sneakers.

She says, “You’re not wearing THOSE, are you?” He knows the look and answers, “Of course not. What do you suggest?”

She shakes her head and says, “Whatever,” leaving him alone to ponder. He decides with dispatch. He grabs a pair of jeans, a shirt, and his blue blazer. He stuffs in the pockets a tooth brush, razor and Zantac. “There, all packed,” he says. Her bags stare back at him with scorn.

He ponders the dilemma of excess baggage. He concludes it’s because women are embarrassed to be judged by strangers on account of their clothes. He assumes these thoughts are the vestiges of an aberrant gene dominant in the female species. Who cares, he wonders. He doesn’t get it.

He sits on the floor, remembering how simple travel used to be. He tries to reconcile the hassle versus the allure of traveling with women. The concept of ‘excess baggage’ enters his mind. Her fault, he thinks. Maybe she’s excess baggage….but the thought ends there.

She shouts, “Let’s go. Bring the bags. Won’t we have fun?” He does, they do. And so it always goes, Traveling with Women. Get used to it!


Bud Hearn
May 2, 2015