Family Vacation

Whenever I talk to my friends about their childhoods they tell me that some of their fondest memories are from family vacations.  They were times of extreme relaxation - enjoying nice dinners in restaurants with white table cloths, sleeping till noon in queen sized hotel beds, and spending lazy days on the beach getting tans and learning to surf.  It was a week to get away from school and sports and homework to simply enjoy time together in a peaceful environment - to take a break from the chaos and remember that you could actually have fun with your siblings and parents. They were something to look forward to all year, creating memories that you would look back on and cherish for a lifetime.  Unless, of course, you were in my family.


San Diego was probably the hardest on me because it was the first one - I was young and naive and therefore allowed myself to be excited.  I thought that we would be spending every day lounging on the beach - I was obsessed with my new pink-striped one piece, and couldn't stop picturing myself body surfing in it or rollerblading with shorts over it so it looked like a casual cool bodysuit.  So I had to learn the hard way that my parents' inexperience with family vacations led them to make the unfortunate assumption that going to a new city meant not wasting a moment and seeing everything it has to offer under the "kid-friendly" section of the guidebook.  They could not seem to grasp that a vacation is for relaxing, and therefore my first family vacation experience was spent waking up while it was still dark out, stuffing my mini-backpack with Nutri-Grain bars for sustenance, and walking around every possible animal park within a 20 mile radius.  The San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Wildlife Park, SeaWorld...for me, San Diego has stood for a whale's vagina long before Ron Bergundy came along.  We would finish the day with dinner at Denny's - which was attached to our "hotel" - and be asleep by 9 so we could be up by 6 the next morning to continue our animal tour from hell.  This went on for six days.  Finally a glimmer of hope came though on the last day, when I was informed that we had run out of zoos and were going to spend the day shopping.  I was ecstatic to at last be able to do something normal and just hoped that their mall had a Weathervane. So you can imagine my surprise when we drove past the malls, over the Mexican border, and straight into a magical land known as Tijuana.  My little brother and I took in the sights of pregnant homeless women and houses constructed of sheets while my dad bartered with a toothless man to get the price down on an authentic Mexican blanket.  Breaking him down to half the price and pumped about his savings he then took us out for a lovely lunch of original Tijuana street stand fish tacos.  On the flight home the next morning I made a personal vow to never underestimate my family's ability to dismay me, and to also never eat Tijuana fish tacos before a five hour flight ever again.


After such a lovely experience on our day trip to Mexico, it only made sense that our next family vacation should be to spend a solid week and a half there.  My initial reaction was horror, but my dad assured me that he had done his research and this time we would be travelling the scenic "Baja Peninsula".  He showed it to me on a map and, promising to keep a safe distance from Tijuana, I once again made the dreaded mistake of allowing excitement for the trip.  Everyone I knew that had gone to Mexico boasted about its beautiful beaches and lack of animal parks, so I thought that this trip had some solid potential.  Once again, I should have known better.  My dad had yet to realize how much research and planning goes into a good vacation, so we spent the majority of the time in the car driving on highways littered with armed guards to "popular tourist destinations" such as hot springs packed with retired people that smelled so strongly of sulfur it made your eyes water.  Our meals consisted of - you guessed it - fish tacos, as well as the occasional whole fish complete with bones and eyes because my dad could not get over how cheap they were.  When we did buy the whole fish the men in the restaurant would come and put gold necklaces on me and call me Princess, which my mom thought was "very sweet".  Of course, we had also made the cardinal mistake of not staying in a resort, and had booked rooms at local hotels that were straight out of horror movies with dirty sheets and barely running water.  At the end of the week we walked into one particularly dungeon-like hotel room, causing my mom to start hysterically crying.  We left the next day and Mexico as a whole joined wildlife parks on my list of places that the world would be better without.


However, we stuck together and used our vacations as learning experiences, so after a few more we finally started to get our act together.  LA was a success (minus the part about my dad mortifying me on the tour bus by screaming and hugging me when we passed Leonardo DiCaprio's house), Hawaii was even better (except my shorts and t-shirt tan lines, but that was no ones fault but my own), and St. Kitts was perfect.  It seemed we had hit a stride and now made sure that all our vacations were well planned and researched, complete with plenty of relaxation time, no planned animal observing, and no skimping on hotels.  My dad started doing a lot of business in St. Croix and our family began to go at least once a year, and after that we had vacations down to a science.  We would stay at the same hotel every time - it was walking distance to a beautiful sandy beach where we would tan and snorkel during the day, followed by relaxing family dinners at night.  There was something for everyone - we had finally hit a stride.  I should have known it was too good to be true.


It started as a perfect day at the beach.  The weather was hot and sunny and the water was clear and warm yet refreshing.  I had spent my day doing my dad's "Ultimate Tan Regimen" which consisted of alternating between laying on my stomach until I got hot, swimming, laying on my back until I got hot, swimming, and repeating until the desired level of reddish-brown is achieved.  I was finishing up a cycle on my back and starting to feel unbearably hot, so I decided to join my dad and my brother in the water for a handstand contest to cool off.  The previous sentence might be misleading so I feel I should mention that I was about 19 years old at this time.  That said, the handstand contest led to somersaults, which led to seeing who could hold their breath the longest underwater, and a variety of other games.  We were having a blast but running out of entertainment, so I came up with the suggestion to have all of us crouch down in the water and jump up to see who could jump the highest.  Everyone agreed that this was a really great and fun idea.  We counted to three and went underwater, preparing to all spring up at the same time so we could see who was the highest in mid-air.  I had lost almost all of our other competitions but had confidence in this one due to my long legs, so I was pumped to finally win.  I got as low as I possibly could and, using all my strength, pushed myself up in the air with my arms over my head victoriously.  What happened next plays in my memory in slow motion.  As I was rising to the top I saw my dad and brother also in the air, all of us with pure joy on our faces.  I soon realized that I was the clear winner here, at the top of my game with a solid 6 inches more height than anyone else so there would be no arguing when we landed.  I had a brief second of excitement for my win, looking forward to gloating and daring them to challenge me with a rematch.  But as we were lowering into the water I noticed that my dad and brother's faces had changed.  Just one second ago they were ecstatic, but now had looks of horror with their arms covering their faces to shield their eyes.  My brother actually looked like he was about to cry.  I landed back on my feet and confusedly looked around me to see what they could possibly have seen to scare them so badly.  After nothing was to my right or left I finally looked down and saw what had caused them such shock and revulsion.  My bathing suit top was completely off.  Time started going in normal speed again and I covered up as quickly as possible, not sure what their reactions would be but hoping they would pretend it never happened and move on.  I looked at them nervously, and we all shared a moment of awkward silence before my brother literally started gagging.  Thinking he was overreacting I looked to my dad, hoping he would just laugh it off and tell my brother to calm down.  No help there.  My dad was having the same reaction, and looking at me with utter disgust he told me that I should go back to the beach with my mom and not talk to them for a while.  Stunned and horrified, I ran to the beach and told my mom that I had just accidentally flashed the two men in our immediate family.  Like them, she took this very seriously.  There was no laughter as she told me that I should just leave them alone for the rest of the day, and hopefully by tomorrow they will have forgotten about it and forgiven me.  Therefore, I spent the remainder of the day condemned to a beach chair 20 feet away to reflect on my actions.  Everyone went snorkeling without me, and when it came time to have lunch I quietly got my sandwich and brought it back to my lonely beach chair to eat in silence.  We all went to bed early that night, and I fell asleep praying that they would wake up in the morning having forgotten all about it.  Luckily, they did, and the next day it was like it had never happened and our vacation went on peacefully as planned.  To this day the incident has never been mentioned amongst my family again.