Vacation 1999: Prologue

GenePool Humor

Vacation 1999

Prologue: In Case You Weren't Paying Attention

It's that special time of year again, the time of year when Debbie and I elect to voluntarily commit ourselves to bankruptcy in the name of rampant consumerism; it's time to visit Disneyworld.

This will be our third trip in three years, and my third attempt to convince all of you readers out there to never ever go on vacation. Or leave the house. Or have children. Based on the comments I've gotten on my past vacation memoirs, none of you are paying attention.

This is not to say that my wife is paying any attention either, and she was there for all of them. She keeps planning these things (I have no say in this) and finding new ways to make it interesting. Either she doesn't like me very much or she's going out of her way to make sure I have lot of new things to write about.

Here's a recap of the previous trips, just to bring you up to speed.

The1997 trip included: psychotic Bahama natives who tried to drown us, rental car agencies that liked it when we paid in advance AND on delivery, a cruise ship with no chairs and deadly jello, timeshare salesmen who only accept "no" when you choke the life out of them and consequently can no longer respond, and a four day whirlwind tour of Disneyworld while fighting walking pneumonia. The best thing I can say about this vacation is that I got a book deal out of it. My publisher's exact words, on reading it for the first time were, "oh dear god." I think they gave me the contract out of pity.

The 1998 trip was an improvement, in part because there is no conceivable way it could have been worse. It was seven days of non-stop Disney. I discovered that it wasn't the walking pneumonia; it really is that hot in Florida in August. We also discovered a full week is still not enough time to do everything at least once, but we gave it our best shot. The best part about this trip was when we stopped trying to do ANYthing, and just sat by the pool and drank.

Which brings me to 1999. I think Debbie, when looking at our previous trips, decided to combine the worst elements of both. This is why in a few days I'll be in Florida, in August, in Disneyworld for a week, trapped with my children, my parents, and my in-laws. Because the real drawback of JUST going to Disneyworld is that we really miss out on the pure psychosis we got to enjoy in the Bahamas. It's not even that all of us don't get along, but these are not normal circumstances, and, as we all know from watching our government at work, the speed in which a decision is reached is inversely proportional to the number of people involved in the decision. The fact that we're all related only makes things worse.

So I don't really know how this is all going to work out. I may opt for sitting at the pool and drinking for seven days. My father has already announced his intention to do just that, and I don't think I blame him at all.

As before, I'm taking my notebook. Given the amount of detail involved in my previous accounts, some of you have asked how I find time to do anything other than take notes. This is because you haven't seen my notes. I learned the time-saving technique of minimalist note-taking in school. Here's a sample from my high school history course on the American Revolution:

England sucks.

Go Patriots!

I don't want to imply that I only wrote two sentences in four months of lectures on the American Revolution. I actually wrote only one sentence; the second one referred to the 1985 Superbowl.

So all I really write down is what rides we went on, in the rough order in which we went on them. The time line, and everything else, I'm pretty much making up.