Vacation Duels

This year we decided to take a full week vacation with the nuclear family to relax, reset, and recharge before the onslaught of summer hits and hopefully a reviving economy generates greater work load making us too busy for such luxuries.  We loaded up the car early and got on the road again.

 Fifty percent of all conversations were composed of the following questions, "Are we almost there yet?  Why is it taking such a long time?"  The kids were in a big hurry to get on with vacation, and they constantly let us know that imprisonment in our car was not what they had in mind.  There was far fewer complaints during the long drive to Yellowstone last year, mainly due to the fact that we were in a different car, and there were lots of people to distract them.  They got their revenge however as they teamed up to repeatedly sing, "Vacation all I ever wanted.  Vacation, come on and get away."  They learned this old Go-Go's song from the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks movie "Chipwrecked", and have completely beaten us over the head with it ever since.  Normally Heather chides me for letting such things get to me, but even her seemingly eternal patience was far beyond spent.  We found that we used the word "vacation" an annoyingly high number of times in conversation, and each time unintentionally served as the cue for more psychological warfare from the pink and blue carseats behind us.  We heard the song so frequently that we occasionally caught ourselves singing it unconsciously, which was both amusing and obnoxious.

I decided to fight fire with fire and in a deep voice sang "Flowers on the Wall" by the Statler Brothers, which supremely annoyed them.  This didn't stop them from singing, mind you, but it made me feel better that at least I was annoying them as much as they were annoying me.  Everytime they heard "Countin' flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all", they shreiked at me and sang even louder while mixing in shouts of "Daddy, stop that yucky song!"  Of course all 3 of us were smiling throughout the exchange while Heather sighed and popped another Tylenol.  This would be the typical routine for the next 8 days. 

Midway through the week we caught both kids individually singing my song under their breath "Playin' solitaire til dawn, with a deck of 51."  Victory.