The worst vacation I ever subjected my wife and kids to was all my fault. No sense denying it now. Panama City in the summer, with sugar white sands and warm waves and sunrises and sunsets over the water. Seafood platters at Captain Anderson's and go-carts. What could ruin a great vacation like that?
I tell you what can-and will-ruin any vacation. Superlatives ruin everything. Not just good or better but BEST must be the theme. Not just enjoy hanging out on the beach, but spending hours and hours burning in the sun because it has to be the best beach trip ever. Not just going and playing goofy golf or go-carts or Gulf World Marine Park, but going and doing goofy golf AND go-carts AND Gulf World Marine Park every waking hour not spent on the beach.
Because it has to be the best beach trip ever.
Playing video games at the arcade until two in the morning? Check.
Three different goofy golf courses? Check.
Going into every single souvenir shop on the strip looking for more sand dollars and T-shirts? Check.
Somewhere along the line, between the sunburns and the bags of worthless crap, I forgot about the relaxation part of vacation. I know exactly where the low point of the whole trip was, the point that the 12-steppers would all be using as their rock bottom.
It was the Gran Maze at Coconut Creek, as we left town. The goofy golf went well, despite grumblings over sunburns, and I decided it would be "fun" to do the huge maze there as a last hurrah of family togetherness before we started the five-hour drive home. So we paid good money to enter a giant labyrinth advertised as "about the size of a football field" and "a great place for children and adults."
It's actually about the size of Yellowstone Park, approximately 3500 square miles. Watch out for herds of bison roaming the middle. And the volcanoes.
By our second half-hour in the damn thing, it had totally lost its allure. Sun mercilessly beating on us and our sunburns, wrong turn after wrong turn resulting in frustration and temper. Kids crying, wife pissed at me for dragging her into it, and me bullheadedly keeping on determined to beat it and get out.
I must have been suffering from sunstroke or something. That is the only way I can explain how, when Stacey chanced upon the emergency exit that would get us out on the street immediately, I told her SHE could give up and take the kids out (and wait for me in the car, of course) but I was going to finish the maze with or without them. I think Stacey was suffering from sunstroke as well, that is the only way I can figure she didn't take a swing at me. I think I've blocked out the memory of the dressing-down she gave me, though.
I do remember the first couple of hours of the drive home were really quiet.
My realization that too much vacation crammed into a vacation turns it from a vacation into a hell-cation was dearly bought. These days, I plan lots of down time into any trip, and I have learned the hard way not to cram too much to do into any holiday.
Thanks, Gran Maze.
Thanks a lot.
Maybe chasing superlatives ruins a lot of things. You can't just go see a movie, it has to be the best one ever. A hamburger has to taste so good it makes your eyes roll back in your head. Kids have to have not just friends but a whole bunch of best friends. Why just buy a car to get you from one place to another when you could have the perfect car that completes you and reveals you as the person you always were destined to be.
There's a lesson in there somewhere about being contented with what you have, and if I were the best author ever I am sure I could draw it out somehow. But since I'm content with not being the best at anything, I'll leave it to you to take your own meaning.
Meanwhile, does anyone know how to get out of this maze? Left or right at the next turn?
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