Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

by John Hodgman

I cannot remember whether this was my decision or her command. Maintaining such fogginess about free will is, I think, a secret to a lasting marriage.

There are many joys of parenting, but ultimately we are robots training our own upgrades to replace us. But my son doesn’t know this yet. He doesn’t know that his job is to grow and thrive apart from us and conspire with time in our destruction. He still holds our hands and does not treat us like we are hopelessly stupid and so I wish to protect him.

And since your neighbors have now been transformed into the idiot monsters you always believed them to be, the zombie epidemic offers you moral permission to shoot them in the head, finally.

Obviously I didn’t actually want my wife and children and everyone else to be crushed by a giant, ancient, unspeakable god crawling across the Earth. But I hadn’t really made any plans for the world not ending, and now I was stuck. I had lined up no work for 2013. And honestly, what more was there for me to do?

I must console myself in the certainty that I am helping them and damaging them in other ways I cannot see.

And wine is also like religion because the people who really get into it tend to be fucking unbearable.

Maybe that is what happens every morning. Maybe we wake to a new life every day and grasp sadly at disappearing memories of the last one as we awaken, until they are finally burned off by the sun.

And you know that this is just fashion, that dressing like an old person is exactly what you used to do when you were a pretentious young person, but you bury that knowledge and enjoy the illusion: I am just like you!

The definition of a grown-up is that they deal with shit. That’s almost all they do. They get shit done.

There are times when all the lies you have told about yourself to yourself just fall away. In your twenties, you tell yourself the lie that you are unusual, unprecedented, and interesting. You do this largely by purchasing things or stealing things. You adorn yourself with songs and clothes and borrowed ideas and poses. In your thirties, you tell yourself the lie that you are still in your twenties. Many in their forties tell themselves the same lie, until a moment like this, and suddenly you see yourself clearly.

We who are white men can’t change who we are. But we could do worse than to follow what I took that summer as his example: to be aware of and curious about the world around you, to give what you have with neither apology nor self-congratulation. When praise comes to see you, get out on the fire escape. When it’s someone else’s time to talk, listen. Don’t turn your house into a museum. When your work is done, get out of the way.

But even when your children are older and have demonstrated common sense and physical and emotional resiliency due to your really incredible, award-worthy parenting, you still feel a pang of panic when they leave your sight.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don’t even notice. It’s never any fun, but it can’t be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while. You have to go slow, breathe, don’t stop, get your head under, and then wait. And soon you get used to it. Soon the pain is gone and you have forgotten it because you are swimming, way out here where it’s hard and where you were scared to go, swimming sleekly through the new.

And as for my wife and children, I know them personally, so I don’t need to thank them here. They are just in the other room right now, and I am lucky that this is true.