This is not really a rant about Doper Idle Thoughts, but more a rant about my own laziness, and about the vile evilness of the airline industry. But mostly about my own laziness.
In a Pit thread, Idle Thoughts rants about his evil stepfather, who won’t let him come over for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas, and enjoy those holidays with his own mother and brother, over something as seemingly superficial as the length of his hair. Every year, Idle really really wants to go, despite the apparent fact that his family is pretty disfunctional. It’s a sad, sad tale that you can read about here.
And while I’d like to sympathize, I can’t really empathize. It is so opposite to my situation that, well, I feel bad for myself, but I can’t expect anyone else to feel bad for me.
Here’s the situation:
When we kids moved out of my parents’ house, we made a point of returning home for Xmas every year. It was nice having the nuclear family together again, if only for a few days per year. Then my brother got married, knocked up, and familied. For about a decade we’d drive from my parents’ to his house on the 26th and spend a few days. Not the same, but still nice. Then my sister moved South and started a family. A few years back, my parents moved there, too. And my brother moved out West.
Not the point of this rant, but it’s been 6.5 years since I’ve seen my only brother. And his family. The last time I saw my nephew, hew thought girls were icky. Now he’s doing Og knows what with the college babes. (I hope.)
While my family is great, and probably the least dysfunctional family in the known universe, I’ve always been a little meh about going to visit them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m not welcome simply because of my coiffe. Quite the opposite, over the decades I’ve brought a good number of strange women (some strangers, and some simply strange) into my parents’ (and sister’s) house nearly uninvited, and said women were always welcomed with open arms. In fact, they were made to feel like part of the family immediately. In fact, I’m the only child of my parents who was ever allowed to share a bed with an unmarried romantic interest in my parents’ house. My sister wasn’t even allowed to sleep with her fiance.
So why am I so meh about going to see them? Well, for one thing, it’s family, and even a perfect family can be trying at times. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that. But the bigger thing is the travel part of it. The onus of travel has usually been on me, being that I’m a single person and don’t have to buy plane tickets for an entire family. There’s simply less of me to move. But the burdan of purchasing the ticket is a heavy one, year after year. Making the arrangements is a pain. And the purchase price is sometimes way out of my league.
That was true in the old days. Now, since 9/11, it has become a colossal pain in the ass. Fares are outrageous. Security sucks. And there is no such thing as a direct flight anymore. A typical flight is 6+ hours, with a layover in Detroit or Nome or Godforsakenistan or something. I hate it. It is no fun for me. It sucks all the fun out of the holidays. The entire thing is a cloud over my holiday season, beginning well before Thanksgiving.
Yes, I could relieve some of my own misery by buying plane tickets in August. Cheaper fares, better flight plans, and all that. But for one thing, it just seems wrong planning for Xmas in August. For another, my family never firms up their own plans (which never change) until much later. And lastly, I’m a lazy slug who has worked up procrastination into an art form.
Next year will be different, I promise. On some sulty Summer night I will plan for the future.
This year, however, is a bust. For the first time in my life, I’m going to have to tell my family that I’m blowing them off for the holidays. (Except for the time I didn’t make my flight because I had a fever of 112 and was barfing up my own spleen.) The cheapest flight is around $400 and over 6 hours long and doesn’t get in until around 2 am. And they get worse from there. And I’m sorry, but I’m just not doing it. I need a break from it. I need a vacation from my Xmas vacation.
After trying to buy airline tickets last night, my girlfriend and I decided that we’re going to propose “Christmas II, the Sequel” to my family in March. If we order airline tickets tomorrow, we might be able to get them for little more than $150 each. And we might even be able to swim at the beach at that time of year. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Until I read Idle Thoughts’ Pit thread. Now I feel like a cad. I have a family that looks forward to my one and only visit every year, and I’m blowing it off because I’m cheap and I don’t like having my shoes searched for explosives.
I know my youngest niece is going to be heartbroken. I hate that.
And now I’m thinking about Chex party mix and kringle* and egg nog and red and gold table cloths and a big happy tree and crackers and pickled herring and Santa. All the superficial trappings that make it all so fun. Sticking a Christmas bow in my sister’s hair. Telling dirty jokes to my BIL. Hugging my nieces. Hanging with my father. Talking with mother while she makes breakfast.
I’ve never realized before how much I would miss all of that.
Ho ho fucking ho. 
*A holiday breakfast pastry, eaten while opening presents. Without it, Santa might as well not even exist.
