Jared H

The Vacation

Every year my family and I go on vacation to a beach house in the Outer Banks. We have been doing this ever since I was two years old and it is always fun. But one year we went stands out, and that year was 2 years ago when I was only 13. That year we did everything the same we spent a couple days packing clothes, food, and other essential items like my phone. After we were done getting everything we needed we crammed it all into are SUV and hit the open road during about mid-July.

This year was supposed to be extra fun because there was going to be good weather all week nothing but sunshine and smiles I could not wait. The road trip always stinks because we leave at like 3 in the morning and get there at like 10 a.m. but we usually stop at least once because my brother has the bladder of a pregnant women and he has to go every 15 minutes. So we ended up stopping at some shady gas station at 4 a.m. and I had to walk him inside which were just fantastic I thought I was going to get mugged but I made it out with my brother and the more important thing which was the small plastic package of Little Debbie fudge rounds. I hate to be like this but if someone can at me I would have thrown my brother at him and protected the fudge rounds those things were my life. Anyway back to the story I had a long night of getting no sleep, which was either because I was so excited to get there that I couldn’t sleep, or every time we hit a bump my face slammed against the cold glass of the window. I knew we were close when I could smell the salt water and the sun was up. The last hour drive to get there was the worst part because you are so close you can literally smell it. At about 10 we arrived at the beach house that we rent from a friend of my mom we started the long painful process of unloading everything. First we brought all the bags of food up and sat them in the kitchen for my mom to start putting away. Then we had to take all of the suitcases with our clothes in them and unload them in each of the bedrooms, which took approximately one crap-ton of time. After all that was done it was about 1 pm, everyone was starving so we all went out to eat at some seafood restaurant that was about 10 minutes down the road. I don’t remember if the food was good or not I was too hungry to care I just ate anything and everything that was in site. After we were done eating we all got into the car and drove back to the beach house and took naps. After we woke up we all sat outside on the balcony for a little while to watch the waves then we went to bed.

The next day we all woke up early and I made me some coffee and I sat out on the balcony watching the ocean until the rest of my family woke up. For breakfast my mom fixed some eggs and bacon. My brother and I ate really fast so that we could get ready to go to the beach and relax and have fun. My mom and dad like to take their sweet time getting ready so it

was like 10 am before we got there. After about 3 hours we came back to the beach house and ate some lunch and after lunch we all went to the beach again and stayed till about 5 pm then came home showed, ate dinner, and went to bed.

The next day was pretty much the same thing except about 1pm when we were back at the house to eat lunch my brother and I were walking around the house exploring and picking up sea shells. About 10 minutes into are journey my 8 year old genius brother decides he is going to try and crush a small cactus with his bare foot. I being 13 years old thought I was funny as he picked up his foot and smashed it down on top of the green spiky plant.” Ouch” he yelled, then 5 seconds later he was in tears and begging me to carry him inside which I did and after a explaining what happened to my parents (I may have excluded to part were I watched and did nothing to stop him) my mom and dad laid him on a table while the pulled about a hundred little spikes out of him foot. My job was to hold a flash light as my mom held his hand and my dad pulled each one out with a pair of tweezers.  Each time my dad would pull one out he would scream and cry for about 10 seconds then he would calm down and my dad would pull another we repeated this process about a hundred times. It hurt just watching it but all I could think about was how every minute I was standing there holding that flashlight was just another minute that I wasn’t down by the beach having fun.

After about an hour of pulling, yelling, crying and my arm getting slightly tired of holding the flashlight it was all over. It was a very funny story looking back on it but at the time my brother defiantly did not think it was funny. The rest of the time we were there every time he would see one of those green devils he would scream and start crying I always did the right thing a teased him about it by drawing them and leaving them all around the beach house to scare him. Eventually he got over it the next year we came back but I still mess with him about his cacti phobia.

            That beach trip was one of my favorites but my brother one the other hand hated that experience due to the fact that he could not walk on it for 3 days and he lost some of his time on the beach. The worst thing that happened to me that trip was a slight sun burn because the first day I decided to not wear that much sunscreen which maybe would have been ok if I had not been as pale as a vampire. Anyway the moral to the story is don’t ever think you can beat a cactus with your bare foot because you just can’t its basic physics soft skin does not beat the tough, spikey, pointy, sharp, menacing skin of a cactus.