Knock Knock Jokes, Slow Shitters and Pig Valves: The Cottrells Take a Vacation.

We went to Yosemite for July 4th, something we’d done last year and vowed never to do again. But delusion and denial are my BFFs so we packed up the car and went for a do over. All the conditions were right for someone to get stabbed…Clyde was sick, Hazel was in a bad mood, Ivy was Ivy, and we went with my parents and the kids’ surrogate uncle, Uncle Trent, whose life lessons include “Only cough in the faces of people you don’t know.”

I’ve often thought family vacations are in fact relationship cruicibles. Take all the hangups, dysfunction, old wounds, irritating habits, and put them in a vacation setting and something like the apocalyspe happens.  Disneyland is a prime example.  Disneyland should change their slogan from The Happiest Place on Earth to The Place Where You Discover Your Marriage is Over for Good.  You could do some kind of bar graph or pie chart that shows the likelihood that a marriage will crumble after standing in line with three children at The Pirates of the Caribbean.  Watch couples the next time you’re there; listen to the conversations you overhear.  Under the glockenspiel notes of “It’s A Small World,” you’ll be able to discern the death rattle of a hundred marriages and relationships.  This is true of camping too.  Case in point, in the next campsite a woman and her mother were not getting along and finally the daughter shouted: “YOU’VE BEEN SAYING THAT ABOUT MY BODY SINCE I WAS LITTLE AND IT REALLY HURTS MY FEELINGS.”

Strangely, the trip all went pretty awesomely.

I had my doubts. When we arrived, we found we were adjacent to the bathroom and next to a group of campers who had packed 18 people into a campsite with a 6 person limit. Plus, they were Raiders fans, and if you know anything about Raiders fans, you know they like to project their voices. Also: Wu-Tang Clan stickers on all the cars. I’ve got nothing against the Wu-Tang Clan, and in fact when the VW Routan minivan came out I was very excited for the sole reason I could get a vanity plate that read RTANCLN but then it didn’t work out because RTANCLN doesn’t really look like Routan Clan and also apparently Routan is pronounced Rowtan which is just lame. But they were mostly very quiet. In fact they seemed to get more and more quiet as the day progressed, which was odd. Drunkish Wu-Tang Clan Raiders fans who use their inside voices? Yes. I saw it with my own eyes.

What else? Clyde told his first knock knock joke. And told it so often that my mom started delivering the punchline because she just wanted the joke to be over already. The joke? Knock knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo who? Don’t cry! It’s only a joke.

Hazel played the role of irritated I-hate-my-parents-for-bringing-me-here teenager about seven years too soon.

My dad, who had open heart surgery for a leaking valve a couple years back and has a pig valve now, got up at 5:30 AM, hiked to the top of Vernal Falls and back again before any of us had eaten breakfast. Then when I was cooking bacon, my mom said: “Oh we don’t eat pork anymore in deference to the pig that saved your father’s life.” Then we all had a moment of silence for the pig who died for my dad and then someone said “So if he ate pork and he has a pig valve would that make him a cannibal?” We all thought about this for a while and as we were standing there I totally saw my mom eat a piece of bacon! I looked at her, and she was like, well it’s just one piece.

Our big outing was a walk to the base of Yosemite Falls. Except I only got to see them from a distance. Ivy decided halfway there that she had to do a poo right NOW which meant I had to abandon the others and find the nearest bathroom which was not at all near and had a line of about fifty people. Ivy poos like an old man – it takes 45 minutes and she reads the paper. I’m not kidding. We’ll be in Chuck E. Cheese and she’ll shout, I NEEDAGOPOOP and so I’ll hurry her in there and she’ll sit on the john while I hold the door shut and listen to her rambling about her day at school or the dog or what she wants to be for Halloween. When this happens at a crowded fairground, inevitably someone bangs on the door, like Are you alive?! Or just a really slow shitter? At the bathroom at Yosemite Falls, we took our place in line and the line kept growing for the one stall and I started thinking about the Donner Party and why they never made it over the pass.  And then it came to me: I bet the Donner Party had a slow shitter in their family. A kid who announced to the whole wagon travelling lot of them: “I NEEDAGOPOOP!” and they were all “Oh lord in heaven, we’re never going to beat that storm! Zebidiah, pull the wagon over!” And the kid crouched in the bushes with her mom and was like “Mom remember that time when the …”  And the mom was like “PLEASE JUST DO IT ALREADY, CAN’T YOU SEE THE STORM COMING?”

So I started coaching Ivy. “Okay listen, see all these people, they all have to go to the bathroom after us. So you’re going to have to be fast and push it out. Okay? Show me you can push it out fast.” Ivy made a face. “Good good,” I said. And you know what? Fastest time ever.

On a totally unrelated note, I have solved the Ken hint of penis problem.  So stay tuned for that.  Next post:  Ken gets hung.  In the good way, not the rope around the neck way.

Tagged as: Cinderella, family, mom, vacation