(At least they were in 1997!)
When I wasn’t working, we would take little side trips to various portions of historic Virginia. When I was working, Mom would still take trips with the kids, thus proving that she had more courage than Audie Murphy ever hoped to have in a gazillion years. Mom and the kids especially loved Colonial Williamsburg, and for the most part these things were fun, more or less. Oh, there was the requisite griping about having to walk in the heat, but after I shut up, everyone seemed to have a much better time. Right up to the time the visiting high school kids next door at the motel decided to get drunk and have a pillow fight in the motel hallway. (Yeah, don’t tell me you didn’t do it on a school trip in the ‘olden days.’) A room by the way where we had hoped to get at least one night’s sleep not scrunched up trying to sleep with two adults in a bed designed for one. (You would think this could be fun but, with an audience like we had, it certainly was anything but fun.)
You see, the time we picked was apparently the time a school from another state had decided to take a trip to see the historical area. What we didn’t know, until it was too late, was that our little brood was nestled in the middle of a floor full of hormonal teenagers. Teenagers who apparently were going through their mating season. The screams, for once, were not our children. The banging on the door, for once, wasn’t our children. The fights, for once, weren’t our kids. The police coming and the management yelling, for once, didn’t have anything to do with us. The next morning, bleary eyed with little sleep, I explained to the desk clerk that next time I wanted to be kept awake by screaming kids I would just stay home. He didn’t understand, but then he still had pimples, so I took satisfaction in knowing that someday he too would suffer the endless curse......
Now Mom and the kids did get to see lots of neat stuff, while I did my bit for my favorite Uncle. They saw civilian and military ships, air and space museums, regular science museums, airplanes of many different types and descriptions, all of the army stuff around the cottage, the historical areas, the inside of a working military airfield control tower, zoo and farm animals, and a whole lot of the back of my head. They enjoyed it and they enjoyed the nature walks. They loved the endless fast-food, and they just thrived on the steady diet of video games and weird questions. They even enjoyed watching Mom hit me in the back of the head for asking them......
So, what was their favorite part of the trip? Well, judging by the youngest boy’s behavior, it had to be the rest areas. Trust me, this kid never met a bathroom he didn’t like. I figured his personal mileage, and it worked out to about 10 miles to the stop. Not only could we not pass a rest area, but we had to give him extra time to inspect the back of the stall door. I just knew he was going to dehydrate before we got him home..... As for the little girl, well for her it worked out to about 3,000 bounces of her foot per mile. Someday, she will do well in a marathon, since I honestly believe she ran all the way to Virginia and back. The oldest boy? His favorite part was driving me absolutely bananas.
He spent the whole trip messing with his siblings, arguing with his mother, picking fights with everyone he met, and just making himself a real joy to be around. The only thing he didn’t do was shut up. At the ripe age of 7, this kid can whine like an expert, and on this trip he put his previous record to shame. If you gave him life on a silver platter, he would still complain that the platter had to be polished. He never missed a beat, and remained quite a pain until we got home. Why? Mom’s theory was that he was just cooped up, my theory was that he knew that we were more likely to catch him trying to kill a sibling. Either way, the next time we travel, he will go in a pet carrier. (Oddly enough, sometimes I still think that a little time in a pet carrier would do him some great services. Even more odd, he joined the Army National Guard, and his grandparents blamed me!) ~ Michael S. Pauley
When I wasn’t working, we would take little side trips to various portions of historic Virginia. When I was working, Mom would still take trips with the kids, thus proving that she had more courage than Audie Murphy ever hoped to have in a gazillion years. Mom and the kids especially loved Colonial Williamsburg, and for the most part these things were fun, more or less. Oh, there was the requisite griping about having to walk in the heat, but after I shut up, everyone seemed to have a much better time. Right up to the time the visiting high school kids next door at the motel decided to get drunk and have a pillow fight in the motel hallway. (Yeah, don’t tell me you didn’t do it on a school trip in the ‘olden days.’) A room by the way where we had hoped to get at least one night’s sleep not scrunched up trying to sleep with two adults in a bed designed for one. (You would think this could be fun but, with an audience like we had, it certainly was anything but fun.)
You see, the time we picked was apparently the time a school from another state had decided to take a trip to see the historical area. What we didn’t know, until it was too late, was that our little brood was nestled in the middle of a floor full of hormonal teenagers. Teenagers who apparently were going through their mating season. The screams, for once, were not our children. The banging on the door, for once, wasn’t our children. The fights, for once, weren’t our kids. The police coming and the management yelling, for once, didn’t have anything to do with us. The next morning, bleary eyed with little sleep, I explained to the desk clerk that next time I wanted to be kept awake by screaming kids I would just stay home. He didn’t understand, but then he still had pimples, so I took satisfaction in knowing that someday he too would suffer the endless curse......
Now Mom and the kids did get to see lots of neat stuff, while I did my bit for my favorite Uncle. They saw civilian and military ships, air and space museums, regular science museums, airplanes of many different types and descriptions, all of the army stuff around the cottage, the historical areas, the inside of a working military airfield control tower, zoo and farm animals, and a whole lot of the back of my head. They enjoyed it and they enjoyed the nature walks. They loved the endless fast-food, and they just thrived on the steady diet of video games and weird questions. They even enjoyed watching Mom hit me in the back of the head for asking them......
So, what was their favorite part of the trip? Well, judging by the youngest boy’s behavior, it had to be the rest areas. Trust me, this kid never met a bathroom he didn’t like. I figured his personal mileage, and it worked out to about 10 miles to the stop. Not only could we not pass a rest area, but we had to give him extra time to inspect the back of the stall door. I just knew he was going to dehydrate before we got him home..... As for the little girl, well for her it worked out to about 3,000 bounces of her foot per mile. Someday, she will do well in a marathon, since I honestly believe she ran all the way to Virginia and back. The oldest boy? His favorite part was driving me absolutely bananas.
He spent the whole trip messing with his siblings, arguing with his mother, picking fights with everyone he met, and just making himself a real joy to be around. The only thing he didn’t do was shut up. At the ripe age of 7, this kid can whine like an expert, and on this trip he put his previous record to shame. If you gave him life on a silver platter, he would still complain that the platter had to be polished. He never missed a beat, and remained quite a pain until we got home. Why? Mom’s theory was that he was just cooped up, my theory was that he knew that we were more likely to catch him trying to kill a sibling. Either way, the next time we travel, he will go in a pet carrier. (Oddly enough, sometimes I still think that a little time in a pet carrier would do him some great services. Even more odd, he joined the Army National Guard, and his grandparents blamed me!) ~ Michael S. Pauley
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