Take It Easy

Vacations depress me. I’m still not over the spring break trip I took four years ago during my senior year in college. I had so much fun that I was catatonic for several weeks after returning from Nassau. That was an especially bad case of vacation depression, because not only was my vacation over, but I was acutely aware that I would never again be a college student on spring break. If I ever went back, I would be the spring break equivalent of Matthew McConaughey’s character, Wooderson, in Dazed and Confused, a scuzzy old guy cruising the metaphorical high-school parking lot: “That’s what I like about college girls on spring break. I keep getting older, they stay the same age.”

If you can’t watch a Girls Gone Wild video without crying, you’ve obviously got problems, so I recently decided to confront my demons by going to Key West with Lady Liz.

Key West confirmed a theory I’ve developed over my past several trips: You can truly enjoy only the first day of your vacation. That’s when the aggravating travel is behind you and the happy promise of several days of carefree bliss stretch before you. You turn on the Weather Channel that first morning not to get your own forecast but to mock the sorry, pathetic souls slogging through dirty puddles to their bleak miserable jobs instead of sipping margaritas at the edge of the ocean. Life is good. But the clock is ticking, even then.

On the second day of your vacation the end still seems distant, but you’ve already burned 24 precious hours. You review the first day and decide how you might maximize your enjoyment of the remaining days. Should you sleep in, or is that a waste of your limited time? What’s your goal, to relax or to experience a new place to the fullest extent possible? And did that girl at the kayak-rental place really laugh when you put down your Celtics-logo credit card? What’s so funny about having a Celtics card? They give you a free T-shirt when you sign up.

By the penultimate day of your trip, you’re drinking heavily (OK, maybe you were drinking heavily all along) in a vain attempt to push the impending end of your vacation from your consciousness. I sat there on the beach, gazing out at the ocean and thinking about how the next day I’d be back in Siberia. Liz put to words another thought that had been running through my head, namely “That girl on the towel next to us has a really good body to be wearing that thong.” As an aside, it’s the best thing ever when your girlfriend pronounces physical judgment on another girl, because then you have carte blanche to take a gander yourself. Just remember to agree with whatever she said. If you can’t remember what she said because your brain heard “That thong on the thong is really thongy thong thong thong,” then, “What a ho” is typically an acceptable response.

On the way back, Liz and I spent a good portion of our three-hour layover in Miami sitting outside. After eating at Chili’s—I had fajitas with a side order of grim resignation—we wandered out to the employee bus stop to soak up our remaining precious moments of 90-degree weather. We sat there for about an hour with flight attendants and baggage-handling guys while buses pulled up and belched carcinogenic diesel exhaust in our sunburned faces. But we were still on vacation and it was beautiful, warm Florida bus exhaust.

Not surprisingly, vacation depression becomes most acute upon your return. The tendency to make comparisons to what you were doing the previous week is a common symptom of this stage of the affliction. As in, “At this time last week, I was driving a convertible through the Keys on my way to get lunch under palm trees at an outdoor restaurant on the Gulf of Mexico. Now I’m eating a burrito at Souper Salad.” The terrible thing is, you usually love eating burritos at Souper Salad. But your vacation has corrupted you. Nothing is fun anymore, not compared with your vacation.

The solution is to realize that vacations are ultimately depressing, expensive and unfairly color your everyday existence. The next time someone tells you about the great vacation they’re about to take, act like you really envy them. Say, “Oh, I hate you,” and “I hope you get cavity-searched” and other nice things that will make the person feel like they’re really making you jealous. Then go to Souper Salad and enjoy your burrito. ∂