TheBanyanTree: Born to be Wild

[Margaret R. Kramer]

While we were on the road, I read an interesting article in USA Today about
how normal, everyday people let loose while they travel.  They’ll do things
while on vacation, at conventions or conferences, that they would never do
at home.

Let’s see what I can remember from the article:

1.        Overeat.
2.        Drink too much.
3.        Spend too much money.
4.        Gamble.
5.        Trash the hotel room.
6.        Steal stuff from the hotel room and/or other places.
7.        Have an affair.

I think there were a couple of others, but I can’t remember them.

I remember the first time I dropped my son off at college and I drove home
alone.  It was a three hour drive and I was all by myself.  I had never been
that far away from home alone before.  I felt this incredible rush of
freedom.  The weight was lifted from my shoulders and I was light as a
feather.  I could stop or drive anywhere I wanted to and there was nothing
or nobody to tell me otherwise.

What did I do?  I stopped at a MacDonald’s and ate lunch.  Then I drove on
home with rock music pounding my ears.  My hair was blowing in all
directions because I could have all the car windows down without anyone
complaining.  Hardly wild stuff, but it was fun for me.

I’m not really a wild person anyway, or at least, by some people’s
standards.  Even with all the daily restrictions lifted, I still do what I
normally do.

I don’t drink at home and I don’t drink on vacation.  I’m not even tempted,
because I don’t like feeling like crap the next day.  I like looking at the
world with clear eyes, especially when I’m away from home.  I might miss
something if I’m battling a hangover.

Ray and I are pretty good with our vacation budgets.  We always come home
with money in our pockets.  We know how much our vacations will cost and how
much we want to spend.  Outside of hotel rooms, gas, and food, most of our
vacation money is spent on gifts for ourselves and the grandkids.

I don’t gamble, but Ray does.  But he’s not off-the-wall with it.  He plays
a few slot machines, loses, and then finds something else to do.  Ray and I
play bingo, but when we do, we don’t buy a million cards and try to win that
way.  We keep it in check.

First of all, I respect the people who clean hotel rooms.  They work hard
and why should I make their job more difficult?  I always try to keep our
room neat and organized.  I feel better that way, too.  I hate living in a
mess even on the road.  I always hang up my towels and throw my trash away
in the wastebaskets.  The only thing I don’t do is make the bed.  They have
to strip it down anyway.

I never steal stuff from hotel rooms.  My ex-husband used to take anything
that wasn’t nailed down to the floor.  I’d get home and begin to unpack and
find towels, ashtrays, pens, the phone book, and other stuff from the hotel
room in his suitcase.  If he could have got away with it, he would have
taken the TV, too!

I don’t need small bottles of shampoo and lotion, although I know it’s OK to
take them.  I have plenty of towels and blankets of my own.  I have enough
junk in my own house without taking the junk from a hotel room and adding to
it.

I haven’t had an affair, but I can see how that can happen.  You get enough
to drink, the inhibitions come down, you’re fighting with your spouse, you’
re alone, and then you meet someone, and the vibes begin to build, and there
you are, in bed.  Wow!

Or . . . you’re away from home, you’re alone, you have some money in your
pocket, and you go to a strip club, maybe have a lap dance or two, and maybe
pay someone to have sex with you.  No strings, no one knows, except your
friendly co-worker who happens to go to the strip club with you.

Well, I have done that either.

The only way I loosen up on vacation is to eat like a hog.  I try to control
it, but I do eat more than I do at home.  When I’m at home, I keep track of
everything I eat, but when I’m on vacation the food journal goes right out
the window.  So I eat chips, candy bars, hamburgers, pizza, and other junk I
try not to eat at home.  I’m on vacation, I can eat whatever I want, right?

Cruises are deadly places for people who are trying to watch their weight.
There’s food 24 hours a day, just steps away from your cabin, and it doesn’t
cost anything.  Actually, I do better on a cruise than on a road trip.
Cruises offer healthy foods, too, and I can grab an apple or have a salad
for a snack.  In the car, I’ll grab a bag of potato chips to munch on.

I also don’t exercise on vacation.  I work out enough otherwise, that I need
a break from that, too.  From experience, I find I get too stressed out
worrying about when I’m going to exercise, what’s Ray going to do while I’m
working out, and where am I going to work out, so I just don’t do it
anymore.  On a cruise, it’s much easier to work out, because the time is
open, and I can go for a walk around the ship or use their fitness facility.

I find taking a week off from exercising doesn’t hurt me on the cardio
machines or swimming, but it does make a difference in my weight lifting.  I
usually have to go down in my weights initially and then build back up
again.  That shows how fast the muscles disappear at my age.

So, I’m a slug and a hog on vacation, but I’m not drunk or sitting at the
blackjack table with a couple of hunks at my side to give me luck.  My hotel
room is as neat as pin, and I have money to buy my grandsons cute little
dinosaur T-shirts.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

~William Shakespeare