June 2003

Uptight Honky Guide to Kickin' Back

Its nearly summer, and that's a problem. You see, I have no idea how to go on vacation. I'm a vacation failure - I lack action relaxin'. But wait, there's hope…but first, let me tell you a little story…

After my momentous graduation from college a group of chums and I decided to take a grand tourismo across the USofA. Friend 1 was going to work for MS, and Friend 2 was going to Seattle to find a job. And would I like to go along? You betcha. We loaded into the 'Dusty Rose' a shit ford van, and headed west. After being waylaid for repairs at my dad's house for 2 days, we were on the road again. It was probably at this point that I warned my friends about my vacation problem.

My family has a long history of one-week beach vacations. They were always a mixed bag. Sometimes fun, mostly a huge pain in the ass: car trips, boredom, fighting, etc. When I was four I cut my right-middle finger off, (don't worry, it was reattached) and that summer at the beach, I was the only kid there with his entire forearm in a cast. To even go near the water, I had to have a plastic bag on it, and man was that hot. Plus, my mom was intensely frightened that I would get it wet, and thus yelled at me whenever the water was higher than my knees. Vacations went downhill - fast.

As a surly teen, they never got better. There were never any kids my own age worth meeting. No one to steal dad's beers with, and hide out in the dunes for hours at night getting drunk or high and later burying the empties. No girls to express my neo-sexuality in a naïve and clumsy attempt to impress. I swear the dunes near the outerbanks houses we stayed in are littered with windblown dreams of writhing teenage bodies and buried beer cans.

So, now, trapped in a van heading west, with two guys who openly disdain showers, I was screwed. This was going to end badly. And it did, of course. I cannot relax. There was an argument. I made one cry and the other puke. They kicked me out in Chicago.

Where, you ask, is the hope in all this? Godzilla and Grandpa, that's where. And this guy named Timmay. You see, a few years ago, upon being recruited into the ER fold, I was let in on a huge secret. Vacation, properly done, can be a fucking blast. It happened at a pigroast. And there was a car trip involved, and I'm sure I was a bit uptight, but I swear, I'm working on it.