Vacation: Day Two
There are two types of vacationers—the tourists and the relaxers. If you’re a tourist, you fill your entire schedule with excursions and activities, leaving almost no time to chill and (re)read Jessica Simpson’s memoir in your hotel room while *NSYNC softly plays on your headphones. The relaxers don’t plan a single thing and instead spend their entire trip inside four walls or by a pool with a mojito. Activities exhaust me, but at the same time, I’m too anxious to spend too many days doing nothing, so I’m never very good at vacations. I don’t fit in with either group, so I always tend to be doing something I don’t want to do.
Detour
Speaking of *NSYNC, I live for a boy band, specifically the late ’90s variety. The choreographed arm-ography, the vest work, the way one of them would always date one of the pop queens…if it weren’t for the lingering threat of Y2K, it would’ve been a perfect time to be alive.
Even though I pledge my allegiance to the United States of Jessica Simpson, 98 Degrees was my early favorite of the boy bands of the era, which is surprising because they were…less than popular compared to *NSYNC and BSB. They were a boy band who often found themselves in that number three slot, while the others duked it out for the top. I always found myself rooting for 98 Degrees because they had the beefier guys, led by Jeff Timmons and Nick Lachey (from this point forward, I will be using asterisks for N*ck Lach*y as I want to show my support for my queen, Jessica Simpson). I liked that 98 Degrees seemed more like men instead of boys, which of course wasn’t true, but to twelve-year-old me, it was. They were also the most mysterious, mostly because they got less press, and although Jeff was my clear favorite, I appreciated that three out of the four members would frequently appear without a blouse on national TV. While we’re here, I did feel bad for the other one in the group, not Drew, the other, other one, who never took his top off and always had to wear a hat because if he didn’t, he looked like a fifty-seven-year-old Realtor from North Carolina. I suppose I could Google his name right now, but his role was always to fade into the background, and so I will continue to honor that tradition here.
*NSYNC felt the most youthful of the three, although Joey Fatone was possibly in his late forties in 2000 and Chris Kirkpatrick’s aggressive and ever-changing hair stylings and accessorizing made it unclear what year or planet he was born on. Mr. Kirkpatrick was always the focus of my “what the fuck is that,” even when Chris was standing next to Joey during Joey’s spiky red hair journey. Those two were both fronted by my king, JC Chasez, the second most important JC after Jesus Christ. It’s a close second because Jesus didn’t have the cheekbones, turtleneck collection, or flawless vocals that Mr. Chasez had, but that’s neither here nor there. I know their ramen-haired co-lead is off doing solo stuff, but I wish the group would do a reunion album and tour without him. JC could easily carry the vocals, and if they wanted another singer, they could enlist the help of their “Music of My Heart” partner, Gloria Estefan. As a bonus, audiences would get to hear “Turn the Beat Around” in between “Bye Bye Bye” and “This I Promise You.” If Glo isn’t interested, the group also did a duet with Rosie O’Donnell for her Christmas album, so that’s an option too. Either works for me.
Song-wise, I think Backstreet Boys had the best bops, and it’s important to note that Boyz II Men were the ’90s blueprint for all the singing men, but let’s all just take a moment of silence to appreciate all of the groups, shall we?
Where were we? Right, the infamous Florida vacation from my childhood. Growing up, my family didn’t have a bunch of money to spend on trips; I didn’t even ride on an airplane until I was in my late teens. We were blessed in plenty of other ways, but we balled on a budget for the early part of my life. Whenever we would travel, we would get to the hotel and immediately collect those pamphlets they usually have lining one of the walls in the lobby. You know the ones that give you information on magic shows, dinner theater, and the nearest slot machines? We would grab one of each and take them to our room to figure out the game plan for the remainder of the trip. As I got older, the only thing I wanted on a family vacation was a henna tattoo and a pukka shell necklace, but in my preteen years, I was happy to help coordinate other activities. I started my life as a tourist type of vacationer. Usually those advertisements had coupons attached, and if they didn’t, they got thrown in the trash. My parents had five mouths to feed, so we needed every discount we could gather.
Coupons aren’t the only way to save money on a vacation, particularly in Florida. That’s right, Orlando is home of the magical time-share tour. For the unfamiliar, a time-share tour is a simple 90-to-120-minute presentation of a vacation property that rewards participants with things like free tickets to theme parks and dinner vouchers for local buffets. The idea is that you’ll buy a time-share after being sold on all the features in person, but all you really have to do is make it through the tour and you get the vouchers, without actually having to commit to buying anything. The first half of our vacations would always undoubtedly be spent doing the tours and earning our entertainment for the second half of the vacation.
Our first time-share tour of this particular holiday was set up for day two of the Florida trip. Us kids were too young to be left on our own in our hotel, so my parents dragged us along to what we all thought was a condo complex. I don’t remember the name of this location, but my best guess is something like Sunset Living because upon arrival, the only people there were eighty plus in age, and those types of places are usually either called Sunrise or Sunset followed by some variation on the word living. If we had gone a few years later, I would’ve half expected one of the condos to be attached to a balloon bouquet like in Up. Don’t get it twisted, I love the elderly; I’m just trying to paint the picture that these people were very, very old. So old that when we arrived, an ambulance was leaving with a corpse and everyone there was pretty chill about it as if it were a pizza delivery driver heading to his next stop with a pepperoni pan and a side of garlic knots. I don’t know if my parents accidentally booked a retirement home tour or if this was simply old clientele, but either way, the father, son, and holy ghost of movies about old people (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel/Poms/Book Club) were all likely based on this property.
Usually these tours consist of free coffee and stale chocolate chip cookies, followed by a golf cart ride where my dad would tell his life story to anyone who would listen and my mom would stealthily kick him as a signal to him to shut the fuck up. My brothers and I would try to be on our best behavior because our parents were strict, and we knew better than to act up. Usually.
A nice but erratic, thirtysomething woman was our tour guide. Her name was something like Cindy, and I’ll never forget the speed and volume at which she spoke. Do you ever meet someone who asks questions at such a rapid pace, it would exhaust even the Riddler? She spent her days surrounded by old people, so that’s probably why she shouted everything like she was Gerard Butler in 300. It’s likely she either drank a few too many cups of coffee or did a few too many lines of cocaine before taking our family of five on a tour of this particular retirement community, which I honestly don’t even fault her for.
Cindy was a one-woman show at Sunset Living. She spent the day rotating through families, like mine, who needed free entertainment and had no intent to invest in a time-share. I imagine she grew up wanting to become an actor but instead decided to channel her BFA in theater into Sunset Living. “Every day is a performance,” she would tell her boyfriend every morning when she laced up her Keds and paired them with an early-’90s power suit. I imagine all time-share tours are filled with tour de force performances, even outside of Florida, and many of the actors involved have no prior experience on stage or screen. They bring out the Meryl in the unlikeliest of candidates.
When it came time for the tour portion of the day, Cindy loaded us onto a single golf cart. I’d like you all to take a moment to imagine a golf cart. They aren’t made for six people, but we didn’t have a choice. We had two options: Mom or Dad could stay behind with us kids while the other parent took the tour, or we could all jam into that tiny vehicle. If one of the parents stayed back, we wouldn’t get as many dinner vouchers, so that wasn’t an option. Mom and Dad instead sat in the main seats next to Cindy, who acted as our driver and Orlando’s own Pablo Escobar, while us three boys sat in the back seat, which faced outward at the street. Our parents listened to Cocaine Cindy shout the benefits of Sunset Living while she drove through a sea of elderly people going about their days.
At this point, Mom and Dad were distracted by Cindy the Snowman while us kids were forced to entertain ourselves. If you’ve never had older brothers before, it entails a lot of pushing and shoving and hitting and making fun of. There’s also a lot of them grabbing your forearm and using it to punch your face while yelling, “Stop hitting yourself,” as they force you to literally hit yourself. Older brothers can play that game for hours and never tire of it.
Around the five-minute mark of Junior yelling, “Stop hitting yourself,” as he made me punch my own face, Mom turned around and demanded we be quiet for the rest of the ride. Just as she said it, Dad turned around with his thick, Italian eyebrows peeking out from the aviators that he got as a reward for buying enough boxes of cigarettes (the ’90s were wild), which we knew meant business. My brothers and I zipped our lips and made sure our folks could hear Cindy’s drug-fueled presentation over anything we were doing.
Our vow of silence didn’t last long. Bryan shoved Junior, who kicked me, and I’m sure I screamed “ow!” and pissed off my Dad even more than we did before. Now’s a good time to mention that we were scared of my Dad as kids. That doesn’t mean we didn’t love him or that he was by any means abusive; he just instilled fear in us. You didn’t want to piss him off because then he would find subtle ways to ruin your life. He would assign us extra chores or take away the things we liked most. Mom was more of a softie, but Dad was tough. When we would act up in public, he would take his thumb and index finger and place it on our neck. He wouldn’t squeeze very hard, but he would pointedly grasp us and stare deeply into our eyes with a look that would leave Miranda Priestley shook. When we acted up for a second time on the time-share tour, he turned around and strategically placed those two fingers on Bryan, who was closest to him, and let us know that he would drive us back to Ohio immediately if we didn’t stop screwing around on this bullshit tour that we were only doing for free buffet tickets.
Bryan was terrified and I was feeling extra ornery, so I stuck my tongue out at him, laughing that he was the one who had to withstand the direct wrath of dad, but I did it quietly so no one could hear. Much like the men in Broadway’s Chicago, he had it coming, but I was smart enough to know that if I was loud in any way, I would be next to get the infamous neck-tightening. Bryan didn’t take my response well, and instead of ignoring me, he decided to push me off the moving golf cart. As I remember it, Junior also somehow joined in with the push effort, and I flew off that thing like a tumbleweed floating through the desert.
Ordinarily, I would scream and shout for help or make proper noises to express my pain, but the only thing going through my head was be quiet, so instead I pulled a Katy Perry and simply drifted through the wind, softly, like a plastic bag. The looks on my brother’s faces were shock and awe as I came to and watched them drive out of view. Instead of telling Mom and Dad and three-bump Cindy, they decided to just be quiet and continue the tour without me.
A few moments later, I stood up and evaluated my scrapes as an older woman, Roberta, came to my rescue. She saw the entire thing and she herself was in a vehicle of her own, with curlers still in her hair and last night’s bold-red lipstick and rouge smeared on her shirt sleeve. It wasn’t a fancy golf cart that she was driving, just a motorized, single-person scooter. Without even so much as introducing herself, she instructed me to hop on. I’d like to say I was confused, but I wasn’t. Although her wheels didn’t have a seat for me, I knew she was implying that I needed to get on her lap so she could haul ass and get me to my folks in their moving golf cart.
Roberta knew that I was out of options. Older people are often discarded by society, but that needs to stop. There’s a knowledge that comes with living as long as someone like Roberta has and also an instinct that can’t be taught. A twentysomething would have taken too much time weighing the options or trying to think of an alternative solution, but sweet Roberta knew exactly what to do without wasting any time. She knew I wouldn’t have been able to catch the golf cart by my tiny, injured feet, and that if I didn’t act fast, I would spend my life at Sunset Living being raised by elderly Floridians. In retrospect, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been all bad to spend my adolescence with this group. I would’ve been like the gay man in the original pilot of The Golden Girls (his name was Coco, and he was later cut from the show), while the other residents would’ve been my Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia. Not much would’ve been different than the way I actually spent my teen years—in fact, maybe the new crowd would’ve watched Veronica’s Closet with me while I continued avoiding sexual situations with girls, just like I did in Ohio during my youth.
Without overthinking it, I decided to hop on Roberta and catch up to my family. I was a little rough jumping on her lap, but she didn’t flinch. If you’ve ever seen any of the Fast and the Furious movies, you’ll know the look. When Vin Diesel or Tyrese need to save one of their own during the climax, they have a look of determination in their eyes as they focus on a singular goal. That’s the same look Roberta gave as she revved up her disability scooter.
I was young when this whole tour fiasco happened, so of course some details are a little blurry. Were the scrapes on my knees or arms? I’m not sure. Were my clothes ruined? Don’t know. What I do remember is the unforgettable sensation of sitting on Roberta’s legs. As a superfan of queen/icon/legend Sally Field, I am aware of all of her work, and that includes her Boniva commercials. If you’re not familiar, Boniva is a product designed to help slow bone loss that happens when you age. Way before I would see Sally on TV teaching us about elderly bone loss, I had Roberta teach me everything I needed to know. It was like sitting in a pool of Jell-O. The truth is, we’re all going to get there someday, and it shouldn’t be something we’re afraid to talk about. We should all be so lucky to reach such an esteemed age. At eight, you’re not thinking about the aging process, and you don’t realize that your body will not always be firm and tight. Hopping aboard Roberta taught me this at a very young age, and I’m forever grateful.
Roberta put the pedal to the metal, and we eventually caught up to my family. I’m sure we were moving at a snail’s pace, but back then, I felt like we were in an action movie, with Roberta as the rightful hero. As I look at the cinema landscape today, I can’t help but feel like we as a people are missing out on our seniors being the stars of action films (among other genres). Diane Keaton should be in a Marvel movie, and I don’t mean she should be playing some young, straight, white guy’s aunt. I want to see her suiting up and kicking Thanos’s ass. I want to see Alfre Woodard sexing Batman before saving the world without his help, and Dianne Wiest carrying the Captain America shield. There have been enough stories about the aforementioned young, cis, white men saving the world. Let’s see some other people do it.
When I finally reached my family, I hopped off Roberta and bid her adieu. If it were up to me, I would’ve purchased a time-share right then and there and coordinated with her on syncing up our holiday schedules. In another life, she and I are sipping skinny margaritas and watching the sunset on a beautiful Florida vacation property. They say timing is everything, and unfortunately it wasn’t quite right for an eight-year-old boy and a likely-close-to-ninety woman to become lifelong friends. Alas, I was reunited with my older brothers, my parents, and Cindy, who was now on her coke comedown.
We’ve all fallen off the metaphorical golf cart a time our two in our lives. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason for our falls—life just decides to push us off. When you’re young, you’re able to rebound more quickly. You hop on the old lady and keep it moving. But the older we get, the longer it takes to get back up. You might be reading this and thinking it’s a silly place for a lesson, but there’s always a life lesson. Anytime you stumble, remember that there’s a Roberta nearby who can help. She might not immediately come to your rescue, and you might have to go looking for her, but I promise there is someone there to help you up. It might be a stranger, or a friend, or someone in your family. You don’t have to go about your falls alone. Ask for help, look for help, and catch up.
You might be wondering how pissed my parents were after this stunt we pulled. Turns out, Cindy felt terrible about how the tour transpired. She was the driver when all this went down, and I’m sure during some part of her training, they told her not to let any children fall out of the moving vehicle, and then if they do, notice when the kid flies out onto the open road. The snafu cost her a bunch of extra theme park/dinner/show vouchers, as she threw as many as she could at us to keep us quiet. I’m not sure what she thought we would do? Yelp wasn’t around at that time, so the only way to voice complaints about a particular service was by word of mouth. Sure, we might go back to our hotel and tell another family that the tour we just took was led by a woman high on booger sugar who drove away as the youngest child was launched off the ride in her care, but Cindy was so booked and busy that I’m not sure a cancellation would’ve mattered all that much to the bottom line. We spent the rest of the vacation using up our free buffet tickets and seeing local Florida theater performances that none of us really enjoyed but went to anyway because they were free. It also allowed us the opportunity to go to the infamous Orlando parks, which had their own set of challenges…