National Lampoon's Vacation

When I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, my mom, brother and I went on a month long vacation. We drove up to new york, and starting at Niagra Falls, drove down the east Coast to North Carolina. I don't know what possessed my mother to take two kids under 12 on this trip - she must have been clinically insane.

We climbed up the rocks at the Falls. We went to Jellystone National Park and saw Yogi Bear. We went to King's Island (amusement park). We spent ENDLESS hours in the car. ENDLESS. HOURS. LONG, BORING, bad-song-singing hours. We also got into quite a few fights. Some between me and my brother. Some involved all of us.

My brother and I thought it was fun to hold up a sheet, with the windows barely opened. We would let the sheet fill up with air and it would consume the car like a giant balloon. My mother couldn't see and would yell at us to put it away. Sometimes we listened to her. We would also take a kleenex, hold it out the window and wait for a car to come up behind us. When one would get close, we would let go of the kleenex and hope that it would stick to the other car's windshield. What fun we had.

One time after a particularly bad kleenex incident involving a police man and my mother getting a written warning for littering, we were warned to sit still and look out the window. We were barely permitted to breathe. So there we sat. Looking out the window. At nothing. Grass, farms, trees, cars, cows. Wait! Cows. There were two cows. In the field. Fucking. I kid you not. I went crazy - I thought they were fighting. My brother filled me in on what they were really doing...and my mother never again told us to look out the window. Cows. Funny.

We are once again off on a vacation. This time it will be just me and my husband. Key West, here we come!