There is nothing more poised for disaster than the holiest of American rituals known as the family vacation... having been through enough of them i can confidently say this from experience and observation, going back to when i was just a boy and the yearly trip to Ocean City, usually my mom and her sisters would all go the same week, stay in the same place, and by midweek there was always some sort of argument, hurt feelings, crisis or all of the above developing or in full bloom among the participants on the trip... fast forward to my various forays with the BW and her family and i almost pined for the good old days with my own... her father, or the POSA, as he is known, is such a raging dipshit that it was just a matter of time before he had his infantile meltdown, usually involving other quite infantile behavior from another family member, and then it was yelling, screaming and tears... in short let the shit show begin!
I can honestly say that the nuclear family trips with the boyos and the BW haven't been nearly as dramatic.. is there always that threat of things coming apart at the seams? of course... and since the last year or two have been particularly, let's just say, challenging with the I-mac, there was always a worry about shit falling apart... not to mention the lovely fact that siblings are well versed in pushing each other's buttons and the boy dubbed Disaster is an absolute fucking master at the art of setting off his older brother... but this trip would be more characterized by the razor's edge walked by the I-mac and the BW and their varying state of emotions and moods... Disaster and i sort of just go with things...
Probably the biggest obstacle faced on any trip like this is the expectations of the BW... she has this idyllic version of what families should do in her head and while there may be some families out there who pull off this vision in some fashion for the most part it is nothing more than a pipe dream... and not like the one's i was having with the ganja... when things go pear-shaped the BW likes to begin the diatribe about how she'll never do this again, how unappreciated she is, how she works and sacrifices for the benefit of all but herself... it's a bit laughable to say the least... if i got paid like the BW i'd have no problem with a job that rarely consists of a 40 hour work week... don't get me wrong now, there are definite challenges and issues to be dealt with and she is actually quite good at running multiple restaurants almost single-handedly, what accounts to a multi-million dollar business when it's all done and dusted... but she makes things harder than they need to be... or maybe she likes it that way... a theory i've developed over the years as i sit, usually stoned, as i listen to the pissing and moaning...
In fact part of my job on these trips is to play along and pretend like we have a good relationship, which of course we do not... i'm tasked with doing a lot of listening, i've learned not to try and engage in any topic other than what the BW wishes to discuss as it's met with complete indifference or sometimes outright hostility and derision... luckily as the previous posts revealed, i'm usually so fucking high i don't really care and so i listen and nod all while daydreaming about whatever happens to be occupying my thoughts at the time... for someone often accused of being unable to multi-task i do a damn fine job of it... though i'm careful not to let the BW know... so i sit and listen and provide the appropriate answers at the appropriate time...
As noted the beauty of this trip was the fact that the resort made us get two rooms, basically it stated that the rooms were really only set up for two to three adults and so in order to fit we'd need two rooms... the interesting thing was that it was the same price whether we got one room or two and so why not be comfortable? and so we were put in two rooms... basically the set up was that there were hallways that led to two rooms, our rooms were in one of these hallways so basically we just stepped out of one room and into the next... in theory the BW and i could have stayed in one and the boyos in the other but the fact was that we wanted to actually sleep and it wasn't lost on either of us that the boyos, and the I-mac in particular, might want to sneak out at night and fuck about... don't get me wrong his little brother would have been right there with him and so i happened to luck out... i wouldn't have to stay with the BW, funny right? most parents might enjoy a little private time in their own room but since we don't share a room or bed at home why start now? in short, i was thrilled...
So Disaster and i got our own room... the BW and the I-mac got the other... there were many times where it felt like the whole thing was about to meltdown, the first couple days in particular the I-mac was in rare form being the emotional and moody teen he's become so adept at being... add in the BW, who in general is emotional and moody, and we had a recipe for disaster... and while we skirted the lines many times, we somehow, for the most part managed to avoid any full fledged meltdowns... that's not to say there weren't some flare-ups, almost all involving the boy and his mother with me playing the usual role of peacemaker and police officer but in the end we managed to get through it in a relatively pleasant fashion... even Disaster would roll his eyes at his big brother and on one or two nights when they were out he'd come back to the room early and state that his big brother was being an ass and he didn't feel like dealing with it... i'd smile and tell him he made a good decision by walking away and then i'd ask if he wanted to go back out, not that a kid wants to go hang with his old man and he'd laugh and say it was cool, sometimes we'd hang on the balcony for a bit and discuss the constellations or just talk about things in general... it was pretty damn cool...
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