Summer means vacations, but I rarely bother to take one because one of the nice things about being a professional speaker is that you get to travel to some really cool places on somebody else’s nickel.
My wife and I have done a number of cruises over the years, mostly with the Knights of Columbus Insurance, with whom I’m affiliated.
I would offer Christine to choose which cruise she’d like to take, but I’d be afraid she would choose Tom. Oh well, can’t say I blame her. He’s a tad better looking and a whole lot richer than yours truly. Why couldn’t I have those kinds of good looks? The guy has looked 20 for the past 35 years.
I thought about purchasing a Winnebago until I learned that it was derived from an old Indian term meaning “When I get home I’m going to kill those kids.”
I thought about taking an around-the-country trip but a friend of mine, Jerry Bellune, who publishes one of the 159 papers where this column appears, once told me he “saw the whole country… one tow truck at a time.”
Friends of mine from South Carolina often come to Florida on those timeshare deals where they are greeted by torrential rains, thunder, lightning, hurricanes and unrelenting timeshare salesmen, all for a free visit to the mouse house.
Speaking of the mouse house, they often show up with no sun block and by 10:00 a.m. the little ones are fried and fit to be tied. So much for a leisurely day at Disney World.
And don’t you just love those Florida toll booths situated every thousand yards that are a beacon of warm welcome to all the Yankees that come to Florida to deposit their life savings?
What’s really fun is to visit Animal Kingdom where you get to see zero animals. At least the animals have enough sense to stay out of the Florida sun. Maybe we could learn something from the baboons.
In order to get out of the pounding Florida sun at the mouse house in the heat of the summer, you take refuge in one of the air conditioned rides. The only problem is the two hour wait in line to get into the five minute ride that ends with you being dumped into that theme ride’s gift shop where you can purchase a tee shirt for $500.00.
And if you ever ride “It’s A Small World” it’ll take you two months to get that song out of your head. It is almost as bad as that endless droning you hear when you attend a Florida State football game.
And don’t ever get separated from your significant other because it is that precise moment when his cell phone is going to die. Nothing is more embarrassing than having to page your idiot husband because he’s lost.
And fast food is simply an oxymoron. It one of those fallacies that we’ve all bought into at one time or another. What fast food really means is you’re supposed to eat it really fast before you come to your senses and realize that you just clogged your arteries and shortened your life by a year for consuming 10,000 fat grams with that triple deluxe.
On a recent visit to Disney, I sat next to an old geezer who, like yours truly, was waiting on his bride to conclude her shopping. I pointed out to him that he had a suppository in his left ear. “I have?” he asked. “Hum… I guess I know what happened to my hearing aid.”
One of the worst things about going to the theme parks is going on those days when they have “geezer” specials going on. Geezers quit caring when they passed the age of 65. They feel free to have gas anywhere and everywhere and have no interest in going the SBD route, i.e. silent but deadly. They just fire away. Half of them can’t hear it anyway.
So welcome to Florida where you’ll see some wonderful bumper stickers like “IF THE YANKEES WERE SO SMART, WHY’D THEY KEEP THE NORTH?” Or, “SOME OF US HERE AREN’T ON VACATION!” Or, “WHEN I GET OLD I’M GOING TO MOVE UP NORTH AND DRIVE SLOW!”
