pigs not polar bears

Tall Dark & Handsome’s brother just got back from the North Pole. More or less. He spent two weeks in Svalbard dog sledding through white-outs and walking on thin ice.

My mother went to Chicago once when she was 17. Barring truckers, that’s about as far as any of my family got until I started traveling.

Growing up we didn’t do vacations. We did the State Fair. Every summer we’d head to Lewisburg so the old man could loiter around livestock and engage in commerce with the carnies. Funnel cakes were the highlight, but I didn’t eat them because it was too hot and they were too sticky. My brother did. He’d wash them down with big gulp cups and then jump on the ferris wheel until he threw up.

Friends, let me tell you, the only thing worse than doing family vacation when you’re a 15 year old girl is doing it around collapsible tents, farmyard animals and bagged gold fish.

But people do it. All the time. They go to stare at prized pigs and hairy heifers. To swallow hot dogs and slurpees and sing along with country crooners.

It’s alright for some. But not for me. And not for my brother. Not now. We’ve moved on and out.

He still likes ferris wheels though.