The Suitcase

Allison asked the question, "Any comical family vacations" and I thought, are you kidding me I have a suitcase full of memories involving family vacations. I could probably stretch this question out for the year if need be. For one thing my parents love to drive. The phrase, "Who wants to go for a drive," used to make me want to hide under the bed as this would never be an ordinary little drive. No, we would invariably end up in the states or into one of the neighbouring provinces and since we lived smack dab in the middle of Saskatchewan getting to the next province was not quick. Not only do my parents love to drive they love to look at the crops. To this day my father still marks down the dates of when things bloom, blossom, or bear fruit and whatever else plants do. You want to know when the sweetheart cherries were ripe in 1998, just ask my dad and it will be in a little notebook filed under 1998. The worst part was my father loved to drive while listening to Dean Martin! Agh!!

I'm the youngest by quite a few years which meant I had the advantage of trips with the whole lot of us and trips with just the three of us. The first time I went to England was with my parents just before grade 11 started. When we finally arrived just after midnight, my father insisted we take the underground because I had never been on one. My mother said, no we're too tired let's just take a taxi. My father won. It was a disaster. My parents were bickering the entire way and by the time we found our way to the last stop we couldn't find a taxi or a phone to call a taxi and so with map in hand and many a wrong turn later we landed on the steps of our Bed and Breakfast. We had to wake them up. That impressed them not at all. Thank goodness I was in a room separate from my parents because trust me I had had enough.

The next morning I woke up went down to my parents room to find all our money and our passports and traveller cheques pinned up on a makeshift clothesline around the room.

"What happened here?" My mom turned to me laughing and said, "The bottle of gin broke in the suitcase." Yikes. My parents found this rather ridiculous predicament hilarious. Our first day in London was spent at the Canadian Embassy and the American Express getting everything redone. Of course every teller and helpful worker my father encountered had to ask the same question, "What did you do swim all the way here?" They would then get a whiff of the gin and laugh.

It's odd but that first day should have been rather tedious and boring but I remember it as a lot of fun.

I think I will close by posing the same question, any comical vacation stories out there?