Day 140 - Vacation Story

Vacation Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There were too many mosquitoes and it wasn’t even summer yet. There was a dead bird on the beach and that probably should have been taken as a bad omen. The next door neighbors drank too much and got too loud at night. The days were too hot and the nights were too cool – no one never knew exactly how to dress. It was more annoying than anyone wanted to admit. So far, it had been a terrible week.

Bob and Nancy and Rita and Raymond had been friends in college. Bob had known Ray in high school too, but using the term friend wouldn’t have been accurate. They knew a lot of the same people. And they knew each other, but they didn’t really know each other. They had a mutual friend Peter that acted as their common bond. They weren’t rivals for his attention, but in a way they were rivals for his affection. It was a strange relationship where everybody wanted to be the coolest and the funniest and at the same time wanted everyone to like them. They were always trying to outdo each other and win affection from each other and show each other up at the same time. It led to a lot of dares and pointless injuries and a lot of insults and hurt feelings and a lot of laughter. They were all best friends and best rivals at the same time. Nancy and Rita weren’t at the same high school. They arrived later.

Bob met Nancy in college and Nancy had a roommate Lisa. Lisa didn’t play into the current situation at all, but Raymond had tried to date her during that era in college. There was something juvenile and ultimately appealing about two friends dating two friends. It seemed fun and silly and sexy and a lot like a situation from a bad comedy or a sit-com. But life doesn’t really work like a sit-com and there aren’t a lot of wacky hijinks adventures to be had and shared. Mostly Bob would bump into Raymond in the middle of the night on the way to or back from the bathroom. That was what really happened when dating roommates – there were strange and private noises that were inappropriately overheard at random intervals in the middle of the night. Not a lot of sit-com plot to be had.

Raymond met Rita after college was over. It was one of those lucky accidents that should only happen in movies, but really can happen all the time. It was the sort of thing that happened when two people went to the same bakery for coffee and breakfast at the same time one too many times. He saw her everyday for a week and a half before gaining the courage to talk to her. Three years later, they still ended up at that same bakery for breakfast at least once a week. But now it was more about the happy memory of finding each other and falling in love and less about the quality of the food involved.

Peter in the meantime hadn’t had as much luck with finding and falling in love and hadn’t kept up with Bob and Ray as much as they had each other. Peter had spent a year overseas during college and developed a taste for foreign countries. He taught English in Asia for several years, bouncing from country to country. He had nothing to tie him down. He had no roots to speak of.

But as people grow older, nostalgia becomes a much more prominent force in their decisions and desires. There was a longing for a past that never really happened and a reminiscence for the lost potential of what could have been. Ray and Bob and Peter once again became friends.

No one could remember when the idea first came and no one would take credit for it, but it was Peter who made things happen. He made the plans and the schedule and made sure everyone stuck to it.  Whereas once he had been the center of attention, now he was the glue to keep them together. There was something romantic about renting a house and getting together with old friends. It was sort of a great fiction and sort of a lost dream. They were adults pretending to reclaim their adolescence, but there was a sad realization of time too quickly slipping away. Everyone knew it. There was humorless laughter and a forced camaraderie. Everyone’s actions became overly animated and they were caricatures of themselves. They remembered past versions of each other and couldn’t adapt to the person in front of them now. It was a painful realization – to suddenly have nothing to say to people that had once meant so much. They were longing for a past, hoping for something to reignite within themselves and shine to a more passionate future, but instead they were faced with a discontentment that soured their every interaction. They tried to cloak their faces with forced smiles, but too often showed expressionless glances. They all knew but no one wanted to speak up and admit anything. It was a dreadfully slow week with painful implications for the future of their friendships, but worst of all was the forced laughter and hearty promises to repeat the experience again, all in the name of friendship and honoring the past.