I'm Back, sort of

April 7, 2009

I'm back from Disney World. Overall, good trip, although there were some down moments, the worst of which occurred at the Detroit airport last night as we were walking to the bus.

We had:

--1 concussion

--1 broken nose

--several cases of dehydration

--several cases of sunburn

--one sprained ankle

--one possibly twisted knee

--nausea that may or may not have been related to the dehydration and sunburn, but may also have been related to eating junk food for 5 days while riding amusement park rides

--2 panic attacks 

--approximately 1,037,754 Drama Queen Moments (both male and female, though more female than male)

I'll go into more detail over the next couple days, but here are a few general observations and comments:

--Do not try to carry a snow globe from Disney World through carry-on luggage at the airport. TSA will treat it as a potential bomb and take you away. (Each group had this happen with varying TSA style treatment).

--Do not be a funky goth-like kid and wear pants with lots of rivets and zippers unless you like being taken by TSA to a special place to have a particularly thorough search performed on your person.

--Kids are often great, but you pretty soon realize just how fucked up they can become if their parents are fucked up. Some of these kids' backstories give me chills. How does anyone survive into adulthood?

--If you give teenagers a chance to rise to the occasion, very often they will.

--Teenagers, nonetheless, can do some pretty stupid things. Like the one kid who brought $140 in spending money that was supposed to handle at least one meal a day for 5 days plus miscellaneous expenses, but instead spent $100 of it on the first day on Ray Bans.

--Some parents sent their kids to Disney with no spending money. Period. I have opinions on what should be done to these parents, but if I voice it in print it will come back to haunt me in the future.

--The weather was fabulous. A little rain, but except for Sunday, when it was 91 degrees and humid with no clouds or breeze, the temps were in the upper 70s to mid-80s. Then we got back to Michigan, which had about 8 inches of snow, temps in the 20s and 30s and blasting winds. Snow in April in my part of Michigan is not unheard of, but it's not that common either. This really sucks. Big time.

Have a good day,

Mark Terry