Last week, I wrote about getting to my vacation destination. This week I’ll update you on everything that went down, because a lot did in fact happen. Let’s start with the first full day on the beach.
I am lying on a chair on the beach contemplating what to order for lunch: grouper tacos with a light coleslaw, or a crab cake sandwich. This decision seems weighty, like it might affect the rest of my day, perhaps the rest of my life. I order both dishes and ask my mom to split them with me. My mom, if you haven’t read about her before, pretty much talks exclusively in abbreeves. She's all like, “whateves, babe” as she lathers oil onto her skin. She is basically a dark Italian woman who birthed me (a beastly white Irish redhead who wears SPF 60 on vacations).
Here we are, mother and daughter, soaking up the sun, lying on chairs, both ignoring the other’s existence, thinking only about how beautiful and warm and pleasant is it to be around some sunshine.
And then my brother takes our sunshine away. He steps into my direct line of light with his hands on his hips and says, “I was robbed at gunpoint.”
This of course would happen on a Spencer vacay.
“Oh my god!” my mom exclaims, for once forming a sentence that’s not a non sequitur or an acronym.
What happened was this: My 19-year-old brother thinks he’s got street smarts because he listens to rap music and lets his pants sag just below his butt checks. That morning he decided to take a walk into Riviera Beach to get cigarettes. Riviera Beach, which we passed on our way to the hotel, was a bit seedy looking, and according to Wikipedia, “the city consistently has crime rates well in excess of the United States average and is also notable for its high levels of poverty.” You get the picture.
He was robbed at gunpoint about a mile from the hotel. Without a cell phone. And pretty much without a brain as well.
My mom is almost crying, and is also chastising my brother for putting himself in a dangerous situation.
“How could you? Oh my god! Are you OK?”
My brother thinks he’s a soldier and tells us he wanted to punch the kid and run, but because he’s not completely moronic, decided handing his wallet over was the better option.
This might seem like a crazy occurrence, but in Spencer family history, crazy is customary. Because my brother survived, we can add this to the Spencer Family Vacation vault, which is already filled with all kinds of good memories:
1. On our 1995 trip to Disney World, my cousin got the stomach flu and my aunt caught it. At dinner one night at drive-in movie theater themed place, we all sipped on milkshakes and ate popcorn before the main course. My brother, green in the face, walked over to my mom and said “I don’t feel go...” just before he puked up a milkshake all over himself and then my ma. Being that it was ’95, he was wearing overalls. He had to take them off and put on my cousin’s long sweatshirt, making it appear as if he was wearing some sort of vaguely stylish dress. I got the flu next and puked in a sink, a bed, and all over my grandpa.
2. During a trip to Florida in 2007, we rented a car and were fighting already as we piled in. As my brother was rapping, my mother was shouting something at my dad along the lines of, “Get directions, Ed, if you don’t know where you’re going.” My dad backed right into a car chilling in the Hertz parking lot. Our vacation was starting out with a bang.
3. My dad came to visit me in Ireland during the summer I studied there. He wanted to take a boat out to Claire Island, so we got on a ferry. It was extremely choppy weather, the boat bobbing sickeningly back to front and up and down, wrenching my stomach. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to throw up. That seemed to work, until the man sitting directly across from me began to vomit. And that was only the way there. When we arrived at the island, I found a bathroom at a pub, where strangely enough they left little doggie bags so that you could pick up your dog's poop on the island. I stole a few for me and the man to use on the ride back.
4. During a trip to Mexico, everyone in my family got sick. I was sitting in bed, reading a book, and my brother was in the bathroom, taking care of business. My mom comes in and bangs on the bathroom door, begging to get in. “I'm not finished!” my brother yells. My mom finds a knife from leftover room service and begins to jimmy the lock. “ MOM!” my brother cries out. When she gets the door open, my brother is running to the bathroom on the beach, his shorts barely on, so that my mother can have her own bathroom. I had to witness this. I have to vacation with this. I have to live with this.
There are so many highlights of our vacations, so many joyous memories of my mother telling anyone who will listen about her bowel movements in Mexico, memories of my father swearing in public, memories of my brother’s butt crack coming out more than occasionally on trips. But in the end, we usually have a decent time, and we always, always rack up a huge bill.
Related post: The Diary of Ashley Spencer: You Done Good!
Topics: Life
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