Fall Break is the time when you reward the boy for his sterling efforts. From "I won't show you my grades; in fact they don't show our grades to us either" to "I could have gotten more than 119/120" is nothing short of a great leap to the fantastic. So, thrusting him to the gaping mouth of a city in perpetual (ordered) chaos is naturally the best reward, never mind if he would rather spend the five-day recess vegetating on the couch and communing with the bed. A change of pace, a deviation from the accustomed landscape and a slight decrease to the Chinese: Amrikan ratio are what constitute a vacation these days.
NYC tourist circus masters are peddling tours of t.v. and movie sets made famous by sex, violence, hilarity or any combination of the three. For an arm and a leg, you get to indulge your cravings for the histrionics and be vicariously at the center of the universe or, at the very least, a multi-billion dollar industry. Production sets of Sex and the City, Taxi, Forest Gump among others, are hawked as your passports to abscond the monotonous stretch of Fifth Avenue.
***
Actress: (wailing) You're no fun; you don't want to go anywhere.
Actor: Stop it.
Actress: (Convulsed in paroxysm of tears) Stop saying stop it.....
Dramatic egress.
***
Being a meticulous manipulator, you want to generally be in charge of everything. Itinerary, transportation, accommodation when all poked and needled, they nullify any possibility of a vacation morphing into a paralyzing headache. And then there are the things to do and the things to bring: Called aunt/uncle ABC? Check. Money? Check. Closet? And so on and so forth. But in your overzealous efforts, you find packed in your suitcase, wedged between the superfluous and the essential: your bellicose hormones and his fecund impatience. The two things that should have been left behind.
***
Actress: That's it. (Pointing at the Empire State Building)
Actor: What's that?
Actress: That's what NYC is all about, now let's go home.
Dramatic egress.
NYC tourist circus masters are peddling tours of t.v. and movie sets made famous by sex, violence, hilarity or any combination of the three. For an arm and a leg, you get to indulge your cravings for the histrionics and be vicariously at the center of the universe or, at the very least, a multi-billion dollar industry. Production sets of Sex and the City, Taxi, Forest Gump among others, are hawked as your passports to abscond the monotonous stretch of Fifth Avenue.
***
Actress: (wailing) You're no fun; you don't want to go anywhere.
Actor: Stop it.
Actress: (Convulsed in paroxysm of tears) Stop saying stop it.....
Dramatic egress.
***
Being a meticulous manipulator, you want to generally be in charge of everything. Itinerary, transportation, accommodation when all poked and needled, they nullify any possibility of a vacation morphing into a paralyzing headache. And then there are the things to do and the things to bring: Called aunt/uncle ABC? Check. Money? Check. Closet? And so on and so forth. But in your overzealous efforts, you find packed in your suitcase, wedged between the superfluous and the essential: your bellicose hormones and his fecund impatience. The two things that should have been left behind.
***
Actress: That's it. (Pointing at the Empire State Building)
Actor: What's that?
Actress: That's what NYC is all about, now let's go home.
Dramatic egress.
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