Ah, summer! The time for frolic and fun in the sun. Best of all—no school! And if you’re a kid, that’s the best part of summer. Then there is the family vacation. You either love them or hate them.
I have a certain nostalgia for family vacations. These meant spending time together, often in close quarters with inadequate bathroom facilities, bonding with people you couldn’t wait to live without.
This was especially true for me. I was the oldest child, as well as the oldest grandchild, niece, and cousin, which meant I got saddled with most of the child care duties, especially during the holidays. I had to sit at the “kiddie table” until I was 23!
“When I’m old enough I’m going to have my own house and none of you will be allowed to come over!” I once decreed from my corner of the kiddie table.
“Good,” one of my cousins snorted back at me. “Then we won’t get fat from eating all that gingerbread!”
My memories from various family vacations are not magical, warm, fuzzy reminiscences. They are disturbing, embarrassing, and laughable.
Before the days of mandatory car seats and seat belts, I saw most of Yellowstone National Park whiz by from a fetal position looking out of the back window of a station wagon. I was once forced to pee in a small, plastic bucket because the bear scratching its back on the side of our camper would not leave.
I helped pitch a tent in the pouring rain, holding up one side until I was told it was safe to let go, only to discover the tent had been up for 20 minutes and my family was inside staying dry.
I endured riding in the back seat, on the hump, from Phoenix, Ariz., to California during a heat wave in a car with no air conditioning. Every 100 miles we had to pull over so Mom could pee. “Come on, Mom,” we’d yell out the windows. “You’re going to wash away the road!” She was not amused.
Even my hubby, The Brit, was traumatized on a camping trip with his late wife. She had brought a bread pudding (his favorite). As they tried to sleep under the stars, they watched in amazed alarm as a scurry (large group) of squirrels shifted and lifted the pudding and scurried off with it, never to be seen again.
I was understandably concerned when he suggested we take a vacation together soon after he had proposed to me. My idea of roughing it is a motel room with a black-and-white TV. Thankfully, he concurred and suggested we go to Hawaii for an early honeymoon. Wait! Was that an angelic chorus I heard?
I had always wanted to go there and was not disappointed. I teased The Brit saying, “Come-on-I-wanna-lei-ya” is a traditional Hawaiian greeting. He was way ahead of me, having arranged that I got “lei’d” the minute we got off the plane, when a welcoming hula dancer placed a floral wreath around my neck.
The hotel was gorgeous with a large pool filled with swans where we had breakfast each morning. Our room was beautiful, and at night it was bathed in moonlight with the sounds of surf wafting through our balcony door. I donned a sultry, lacy outfit, and my handsome Brit and I shared a magical evening together.
We had several wonderful moments in Hawaii but, true to form, my mind always returns to the moment I had to accept that I was not a kid anymore.
The pool was like a giant lagoon that had a grotto with a bar. This led to another area where a huge slide loomed over the pool. “Why don’t you try it?” The Brit suggested. “It looks like great fun!”
“OK, come with me,” I suggested back. He replied, “I will later. I want to watch you first.”
When you are deeply in love you are so stupid that you will do anything your lover asks. So I took the steps up to the top of the slide. There I discovered that most of the journey down was enclosed inside of ginormous tube.
“Will I fit through there,” I nervously inquired of the 20-something slide attendant who nodded, “Oh, sure!”
“What if I get stuck on a turn?” I persisted, and was assured that there were no turns—it just snaked down to the pool. I assumed the traditional position at the top of the slide, lying on my back, arms crossed over my chest, like the corpse I was sure I was about to become.
And … whoosh! Down I went. The actual journey was probably less than a minute, but I was in a shrieking eternity of fear. The chute was pitch dark with flashes of colorful neon lights and loud rock music piped in so that no one could hear me scream. It was like some kind of tunnel to Hell and I kept thinking, “What was I thinking?”
As I rapidly snaked down I prayed to God I wouldn’t get stuck or they’d need a snake to get me out. Suddenly, I shot out the other end into a deep pool like a gigantic piece of poop plopping into a huge toilet bowl.
“Was it scary?” The Brit asked.
“Does a frog have a watertight anus?” I gasped back at him. He decided to forgo trying it himself. Coward!
We then swam to the larger, quieter pool area to relax on floats that looked like large, balloon recliner chairs. This was easier said than done. The Brit, with his skinny, flamingo-like legs, and I, with my chubby thighs, looked like extras in an outtake from the end of the film Titanic.
As we tried repeatedly to launch ourselves on top of the floats, a crowd gathered around the pool, joking with us and laughing. I think some were even placing bets. It was the most fun I have ever had on a vacation. Well, the second most fun!
Ariel Waterman loves getting “lei’d.” Send her a garland or two via Managing Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 20-27, 2017.