Tag Archives: Growing Up

We Will Go on a Cruise

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“We will go on a cruise, when we have the time!”  This pronouncement from my mother made me frustrated and even more impatient than my 18-year-old self could actually handle, which is to say, I began to whine.  i must say that the whining did pay off, as within six months we were on a massive ship in the Caribbean visiting 3 or 4 ports of call, including Jamaica.

At eighteen, this is not only a vacation, but on the best adventures.  I was “officially” graduated from Disney rides, and allowed to sip Bloody Mary’s and have a bottle of Corona.  I almost had a room to myself–I shared a cabin with my sister.

Every day was get up late day…  And because the late I preferred was noon–lunchtime, I missed being in the main dining room, which was only open to any public for breakfast.  For lunch, I often wandered into the buffet, as well as one of the cafes on a few of the other decks.  I welcomed getting up late as the feeling that the sun is always shining is absolutely the one feeling I wan, especially if I am on vacation.  This made it possible to run out to the pool deck for the afternoon, if there wasn’t some show or movie on.  My sister and I would share a cocktail, just before meeting our parents and a couple of other friends who had come with our parents.  Sometimes, it was easier to pay for a bottle of Corona and avoid the late afternoon nagging that would come from Mom and Dad…  especially in one of the several bars and lounges that were open.  This happened a few times in our two week cruise, sine the traffic continually changed, sometimes making the outdoor sundecks too crowded.  My sister and I didn’t have the money to go  to the ones with the dress code, but we made an effort to get together with the grown-ups at one of the karaoke bars anyway.

This was one of the best vacations I had ever been on, and I am young, so, you know that if I had the perspective of a more experienced cruiser, that probably this business is a good one.  To always have a water bed to sleep on is one of the luxuries I always thought belonged to the ultra-rich.  To have an experience that is related to having a lot of money and a lot of taste is like an adventure at Disney Land, for adults who love this feeling.

The fun thing about a cruise is that the fun of Disney Land and Disney World doesn’t end.  If you get bored of gambling onboard ship, you can always disembark and on land at one of the ports and go for something fun and interesting.  There are bars and restaurants and sites to see as well.  And you get to see all those buildings that could only be seen in unreal ways.

After that first trip, I have fallen in love with cruising.  It has a cult following that attracts people who like to travel, which in the past, was not as easy as getting aboard ship.  I’ve also been on the road trip…., which requires nerves of steel, if you have them.  You go and you stop and stay at absolutely any time you wish, going as far as you want, but just get back home within three weeks!

As this summer ends, we are getting ready again fro the regular business of school, and the changing of season, again.  After a break like the two months in the summer, it almost seems fun to get out big coats and sets of boots, and start to think about the fun of Halloween and Christmas.  I feel lucky to have “things” despite those people who are minimalists, who want to have very few interior decoration or things to carry  around with them.  I am not so attuned to having luck or no luck decide my life. I am very focused on having “my things” with me, when I get them.  So, in this pack rat style, I now have to clean my room.  I still have university text books, and my favorite doll from childhood.  Things that I own, and with a growing family, I must now decide, “text books” versus “daughter and son.”

I almost feel as if I am letting people cruise through my life…  Experiencing it through these objects that i have collected.  But where else, what else, can I do with these things?  Sometimes some of the things are still very useful.  My sister, in one of her “cleaning moods,” got together with her friends and made a three week yard sale, and made over  a thousand dollars. “On junk.”  At this point, even if people were to cruise through my life, like this, I am more willing to get rid of the junk than to care about being nakedly exposed.

So, welcome, please, and join the cruise.  It is an adventure of things and experiences.  Welcome!  Come All, Come One!  WE will have fun!

Hanging Out With Friends

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Look in the distance, do you see the car driving on the hills?  It’s like seeing the roller coaster when it’s far away–the train of cars travel the track–the noise clicking and clacking.  The ride down the hill is a rush of noise and wind.  The screamers have no qualm and scream.

I think the roller coaster is like the popping corn machine at the movie theatre.  Irrisistible.

The hills are beautiful.  Come hang out with me there.  It’s as far as you can see, and then, it just drops….  Into the valley on the other side.  It’s a place in suburbia, surprisingly.  No need to drive for two hours for this fun.  We can make it there in summer or in winter.  It’s just a big hill, so, you have to bring your own picnic.

The hills are on top of each other, building up, climbing higher, and the mounds can be seen, following them, up, into the horizon.  They change colour with each season…  white with a blanket of snow in winter, the greyish green of regeneration in spring, the bright, bright green of healthy growth in summer, and the yellow of dying grass in fall.  It is beautiful here.  And, I do have to travel to get here, but not like when I want to find myself skiing on a hill.

I miss the days when the roller coaster was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  It was complete and utter beauty.  Strength, power, noise, propelled movement, and the thrust and rust o wind.  I saw the engineers sitting at their drafting tables, perhaps their hands on a keyboard and a mouse, as they made the ability of flight come alive.  I loved that riding the hill downward gave me a reason to scream.

I miss that all of my friends and I could just go, on a bus, out to a whole bunch of wild rides…, our favourite one being the Wild Beast.  It was rickety because it was built when wood was cheaper than reinforced steel, and we loved imagining the possible catastrophy of the wood cracking and ripping and just collapsing beneath the weight of the cars with us in it, flying.  Part of my scream was a dare to the inanimate wood to just collapse!

Today, I am more likely to become motion sick on those rides.  I get off, feeling nauseas, and wishing that good things could last forever.  Why is it roller coasters only exist in my memory?  Anything that they are now, are just illness-causing games…  I gamble with myself, with my children, and with my younger cousins and my new nephews saying…  “The next one….  I’ll get on the next one….  I’m not too sick yet!!!”

Do we only go on these rides because we imagine what it is first, before ever, ever, even approaching close to one?  Do we hear the words, “roller coaster,” and know what it is?  Or is the sight of a train of cars running on a track and making a rhythmic beat all the way to the top, …  and we’ve already decided?  Do we watch the cars follow the round about tracks until the end, making sure no one dies, and then, fearlessly, make our decision to go on it?

I tease my nephews, they are young, and fearless, and will attack anything that even sounds remotely fun.  It is a rite of passage towards the time when riding… a hill, a board, or a car, involves more than just daring.  It involves responsibility…., and more importantly, the ability to take control, which is the ability to use the power in your hands.  At what point does all of this make sense?  So, it’s not about booking with mom and dad about borrowing the car for the weekend…., or even for just a few hours…., it’s about filling it up with gas, it’s about parking it in an appropriate place, not only to save on the parking ticket, but so that the car just doesn’t get lifted.  There’s also not putting too many friends into the car, as that makes the car go fast–and the friends screaming their approval about making the car go fast, will make it go fast.  This is a trap for instant car accident if not instant paralysis from getting hurt in the accident.

I miss the days when friends were easy to find and easy to entertain… now, going out with friends, there is a minimum investment of a few hundred dollars just to start the evening.  We leave the kids at home, with a babysitter….  We take the car….  We go a little earlier for drinks….  Then, there is dinner, and, if it is in the evening, sometimes there is a show we can catch.  Lunch is similar…  Cheaper, but difficult to do, is the shopping trip with the girlfriends.  Everyone is on a different schedule, and this makes spending an afternoon together difficult to plan into happening.  But, as human beings always are, when there’s something that we can take advantage of, and, gain from, we will probably plan it into happening.

So,  from the days of  “riding the rails,” when my heart hit the quick beat, now, just driving the safely back from a trip and seeing the house up the drive and getting into the garage, is a true treat, making my heart hit that quick beat.

Have We Changed?

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Do bands play in warehouses and open fields any more? Have they moved on to the stadiums and amphitheatres, away from makeshift stages?  Is it fun any more to go to a concert?

Do we meet our friends at the neighbourhood park, or the greenspace just around the corner?

Do we read books, watch movies, and drink coffee with a cigarette or beer in hand?  Do we remember to eat breakfast?  Have we changed?  Instead of running around for no reason at all–with our friends running after us–chasing us because it is fun–we push ourselves into fitness clubs to be on a treadmill for an hour.

We drool for a great armchair–not to be able to jump high on it–but to sink deep into it and forget we are awake and even alive as we get lost in TV’s imaginary world.  If the winners win, we win.

Are we more lost, now, or when we start making different decisions than we used to?  Where are we going?  Or, have we stopped ourselves from going anywhere?  Do we wait in order to be closer cousins with death or are we too afraid to move, as if we were to move, we travel close to the grave?

We think our children know so much more than we did at their age, and we run just to stay ahead of them.  It is so much easier to break the rules in this world–we have hope, and, we fear the ease of a gun or of a few dollars.

We made decisions, often with limits, and all children need today, is a password.  When in the past, we would steal $20 from mom’s purse, children can drops hundreds with an account, on any site in this day.

There are things I look at, like inflation, and it makes me feel that I have accomplished more than my parents have.  I look at the degree I have from college, and it makes me feel the world recognizes me as one of those geniuses that needs to paid slightly more than everyone else.  I look at the jobs my grandparents and, even, my parents have had, and I think that growing knowledge base and the growing brains of human beings are leading to more good things.  No, I do not believe that we will become extinct….  We have too many brains for that!

What is alarming, is that what I saw happen to me, is continuing to happen with my children.  They are smarter at a younger age.  They have more decision-making power….  They see when there is obviously a question or even a contention over an issue that they rightly can make a decision for themselves!  The most common one that happens, is where they start bargaining for “something extra”:  an extra hour up before bed?,  one more hour on the computer?, if they clean up their room today, can we make a trip to McDonald’s this weekend?  Where does a five-year-old start to learn how to bargain like criminal negotiators?  … But it is happening!!

I am looking forward to my children growing up.  They are beautiful and wonderful.  They are a great gift, and I am glad that I can’t return them.  Life is never turning stale, and life is sometimes hard and difficult, but I am not willing to give up, because of change, or because I am not brave enough to live it.  I promise, to live it!