WHEN A VACATION IS LESS THAN PERFECT

Little kids get homesick for their parents when they are away from them.  Just talk to anyone who was sent to overnight camp before they were mature enough for the experience.   As a senior, that explanation doesn't work for me or explain why I am frequently crawling up the walls when away from home.  I'm surrounded by tourists who are enjoying themselves...or so they seem and speak.  All I can see for myself is that I am the biggest tourist misfit there is.  You might ask the criteria for this title.  I do not sunbathe, do not like most Southern fried foods, have been here at this great vacation site before and saw the sights and would rather be at home in my own peaceful and personally controlled environment.  I'm an anomaly...not agoraphobic, I just prefer my own home to being anywhere else, for the most part.

Typing on a laptop is an invitation to the typo fairy who visits me with great regularity. I spend most of my time trying to find things that are no longer either with me or where I thought I had put them.  Much of what I think I need is at my home.  This leaves me often disoriented and wondering why I am not at home where I could be doing what I want easily.

To make a vacation worthwhile, it should be a vast improvement over being at home   Being an American in countries of great poverty is hardly uplifting.  Having dirty little children grabbing at your hands and clothing to sell you a worthless object so they can have a meal is not relaxing to me.  I cry when I see the TV ads to keep some child from illness and starvation for just a few pennies a day.

Vacationing on an island where everything has to be shipped in at great cost but since the ocfean cannot be seen, falls flat for me.  At the local beach, a sign promising that you will pay a $250 fine if you go in swimming, makes beach attendance pale.  Even walking on the beach, unless you are up at sunrise, falls flat as the professional collectors have, by now, stripped it clean of every shell, bit of beach glass, or pretty pebble.  Fast food places have replaced the scenic areas once yielding lovely photographs.

 At least a US vacation without having to be herded like cattle for air travel, allows one to throw more into a car.  Nevertheless, I will continue to feel 'there is no place like home'  Having no ruby heels to click, I will hop in my car and after only four or more gas tank fills, tolls every few feet, a few 'pit' stops, I will once again be home where my 'real' vacation will start.....my day and life fully on my own terms, in my own comfort, surrounded by all my own creature comforts, family and friends. ..