The prompt is visiting places as an adult that — and the visit not holding a candle to when I visited as a kid. But I’ve actually kind of found it’s the exact opposite. Most of the places I’ve been as an adult have been better than when I was a kid. So, when I was young, we didn’t actually go that many places. We didn’t take yearly family vacations. We would sometimes go along with my dad on business trips, but we didn’t, go to a lot of places, I’ve… Could almost count on one hand the number of times we actually went somewhere as a family, more than like just out to dinner. We went to Washington DC when I was in kindergarten and the Smithsonians were awesome. I still remember them, the Air and Space Museum was pretty new and I loved it. And there’s a big green train engine in another museum, I can’t remember which museum, and I still love that. But somehow — my parents really didn’t like each other, even from when I was a little kid, and that probably colored it ’cause I remember, most of the times going places with my parents, it just wasn’t very fun. They didn’t get along, they didn’t try to make it fun for the kid, and that was kind of that. Trips were either me tagging along in the back of the car, wishing I could just use a bathroom, or walking forever, it felt like. And, we didn’t ever go to theme parks. We didn’t go to lots of places. The first time I went to Disney was when I was 43 and we took our kids.
But I suppose, one real standout memory would be county fairs. County fairs are so much better as an adult than when I was a kid and that’s probably backwards. The county fair when I was a kid — and it would just be Mom taking me, ’cause Mom and Dad wouldn’t take me.
We would go there, and Mom would complain about the price to park. And we’d walk in, and I got to climb around on the tractor displays. And we’d go to the Midland County fair, for what that’s worth. I liked climbing on the tractors and sitting on them, and my mom would want to see the animals in the barns. And I always wanted to go to the Midway and I wanted to ride the rides and I wanted to play the games. But there’d always be at least a minor argument because Mom didn’t want to pay for it. And we would — finally, I would promise that I just, I just wanted to look at the rides and, — and that would be enough. And so we go there, and I would get to look at all the rides and maybe we scrounge up a dollar for me to throw darts at something on one of the rigged carnival games that you never win at. And we wouldn’t get any — we wouldn’t get any sweet treats because sugar was the enemy at that time for my mom. And we wouldn’t get any of the fair food because it was too expensive.
When I got older, maybe tweens age, we might get an elephant ear and we would get the lemonade. Even though we could see the sugar being put in it, it was lemonade. It wasn’t soda pop. But that would be it. We would go, we’d walk around. I wouldn’t get to ride anything. Wouldn’t get to play anything. And then we’d leave.
By contrast, um, our kids are now all 18+, but we’d take our kids to the fair. And we’d make sure they had a wristband to ride unlimited rides while they’re there. And we’d make sure we had a budget for food and snacks. Deep fried candy bars, and ridiculous-looking hot dogs and fantastic fruity colored sugar drinks. And — and by gosh, we would stay there long after my wife and I wanted to leave, tired feet and boredom and whatever, while the kids ran back and forth with their friends, having fun at the fair, ’cause that — that’s what it’s all about. And it — in retrospect, it was a much better time to do that… and enjoy the place, than it was when I was a kid.