release the hounds.

so there i was chatting with some folks, cause that's how i roll, and the guy goes - where did you go on vacation this year? and inside my head i was like, where did i which? but outside i was all, nowhere what about you? and they started talking about this vacation they took to st george's island which i thought was in south carolina but turns out i was wrong (omg!) it's florida, but either way, it's a vacation destination. beaches. condos. piggly wiggly. all the necessities.

i didn't grow up taking annual vacations - i went to summercamp. we didn't raise up junior and mini-me taking annual vacations - we went to soccer tournaments. when my old man was a kid, his family would take an annual trip from their home up in yankeeland to visit family in the rural south. i am not sure you'd call that a vacation, but i am sure my old man's pops had to take vacation time from work to accomplish the trip.

maybe when i was a kid we did take annual vacations and i just don't remember them, but okay, there was a trip once to canada. i drove the diesel VW rabbit truck with a popup camper trailer-hitched to the back. the truck had a camper top, and i am guessing that elvis and sweet baby james spent the trip in the back of the truck. my pops was already in canada, on business, because there were never trips that didn't involve business, and my moms was too long a story to explain here. the crown prince was in canada already, too, because he went to a brilliant summercamp that maybe i will explain another time.

i remember backing the truck+camper into a slot at a campsite, to the wonderment of assorted male onlookers. i didn't know backing a trailer was supposed to be a challenge, so i just did it. i remember losing my favorite hairbrush. i remember we stayed in a borrowed house on a lake in canada, a lake with water so clear you could see down 20 feet, a lake i pushed elvis's head into because at that time i was still bigger than him. i remember sitting in a chair by a window overlooking the lake, in the borrowed house, reading a book. (the chair was in the house. the lake was not in the house. too many prepositional phrases, there.)

i don't remember any meals. i don't remember any other interactions. i don't remember where any of us slept. i don't remember anything else about the drive up, or the stay in canada. it's entirely possible that this vacation didn't happen, or that i have conflated two trips.

i don't remember anything about the drive home except that we were in two cars, and the crown prince had either elvis or sweet baby james or maybe even my pops in his, and also had some canadian beer in there, and although he was overage in canada, he was underage in the USA, so the border guards did not only confiscate that alcohol - they forced him to pour it all out on the side of the road. i remember being very glad i was not riding in his car.

is that what people are talking about when they say vacation?