Vacation Horror Story
The whole van full of tired, cranky, disgusted family members hollered at my brother who sat in the middle bench of the rented minivan, smiling smugly as the poisonous cloud drifted into every corner of the vehicle, chasing out all the available clean air, and replacing it with noxious fumes. John tossed an empty banana peel at me and reached down into the cooler for fresh ammunition.
“So help me, John, if you eat another one of those damn bananasâÂ?¦” It’s unimportant whose cry was trailing off into the abyss of threats and pleas. We all took turns jogging our futility around the block of John’s flatulence.
My poor sister traded glances with her husband of one day. God bless them and give them Brownie points for life. When the juxtaposition of the date of their August wedding and the nearly simultaneous deaths of both my Canadian grandmothers made it impossible for all members of the family to make travel arrangements that would properly honor these three significant events, my sister and her impending husband graciously and insanely agreed to board an airplane with us the morning after their wedding and take part in the week long excursion I lovingly refer to as the “Munro Family Traveling Tour of Death.”
We started in the beautiful city of Toronto, where the cobblestone streets and sidewalk gardens are trumped only by the outstanding shopping and dining, and by the “magic bean” like quality of the Canadian dollar. Mom suggested a little retail therapy for our travel-bruised souls and posteriors, followed by a nice dinner. I rolled my eyes and slumped down into back seat of the minivan. “Just drop me at the hotel,” I grumbled.
“John!”
It was not travel weariness making me so cranky and malevolent, nor jet-lag. I was not sick. I did not have a headache (although over the next several days I would be the cause of several). My case was worse than any of these commonplace ailments. I had the most obstinate of maladies and the prognosis was poor. I was suffering from entrenched malignant snottiness.
I had been inflicted throughout most of the summer, and my condition was not expected to improve during the month of August. I certainly would not be cured at anytime during the tour of death. Frustrated and exhausted by her farting son and griping daughter, my mother instructed my father to drive straight on to the hotel where we could all try to sleep it off before memorial service numero uno in the morning.
The next morning we all set out in our dark duds and dour expressions to memorialize Nana, my father’s mother. The service was underway, progressing exactly as an Episcopalian memorial service should, when I detected slightly discomfited looks and twitching nostrils on the faces of the mourners around us. I closed my eyes tightly and waited.
“John!” I heard my father hiss.
And so there we were, again, six in a minivan, sulking and squabbling our way across the great Canadian landscape, propelled ever forward by unnatural gas and antagonism. A bickering bus resplendent in its misery, we rode into Montreal to memorialize Granny, my mother’s mum, amidst more absurd angst than we would have generated if we actually had National Lampoon place Chevy Chase in charge of the grand-matriarchal send off.
John’s gas did not improve, nor did my attitude, and my parents were every moment about to knock a couple of heads together. Bananas were eaten offensively, insults were hurled liberally, and many slap fights broke out, generally causing more collateral damage that direct hits. My sister spent most of the first days of her honeymoon with her head in her hands, memorializing grandmothers and suffering her family, and her husband wisely stayed out of all of it.
We left Montreal at first light the morning after Granny’s memorial. I suspect that my mother felt it prudent to leave the city of her birth before any of her offspring were arrested or quarantined, and her citizenship was revoked. We packed up the cooler (where the hell did John find those bananas?) and started our journey back to Toronto to return the minivan and mercifully catch our flight back to the land of freedom from each other. We would leave my poor sister and her husband to enjoy their own leisurely voyage through Canada and the Eastern United States. Even I, selfish and brooding, was desperate for their liberation from us. If we could just get to Toronto without hindranceâÂ?¦
Lunch time. Picnic by the side of the road, and let’s go! No time for restaurants, we’re going to get the show on the road and end this calamity.
Bzzzzzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. Is that a bee? Does anyone hear that? Where is it?
Back into the minivan we rush, with John at the wheel. There were no more banana bombs, and my attitude has just been adjusted with a sledgehammer the size of 550 km of the heretofore dismissed and disrespected Canadian landscape. That landscape now had the upper hand, as Dad had taken a big bite out of his sandwich, and that really perturbed the bee was sitting right on top of it. Critically allergic to bee venom, my father was in serious danger of going into anaphylactic shock. John floored it through the Canadian countryside the 30 km to the nearest hospital while I reviewed my CPR training again and again and again in my head as if each series of “press, press, press, blow” was a bead on a rosary.
Dad’s just fine. I am not sure a swarm of killer bees could pump enough poison into his venom sensitive body to combat the sheer force of his will to end our family vacation through Canada.
A few hours and a little epinephrine later we were back on the road. All was well. I had had my selfish little personal drama nicely suspended for the duration of the trip, my parents were too tired to threaten to leave us on the side of the road, and my sister and her husband would soon be rid of the lot of us. Things were going to be okay�
“John!”
