Last Days (and how we're choosing to spend them)

We knew we were in Myrtle Beach when Eric spied some massive dude wearing a shirt that said “This is Bush & Cheney Country 04.” Which made me think of that awful movie The Langoliers (based on Stephen King's book), only the whole country is stuck in a time-warp, and in nothing so pleasant as an airport.

The kids, thankfully, were completely oblivious to anything less than magical. Like, oh I don’t know, the shirtless daddy felons pushing strollers along. A woman coughed, spat, took another drag off her cigarette. Kan said: “It’s just like Disneyland, except this is BETTER because here there is AN AQUARIUM.” (Flash forward ten years to her sense of utter betrayal because I did not correct this.)



We went to an IMAX film called Dolphins & Whales, narrated by Darryl Hannah… from Splash. The movie was the emotional equivalent of a bad acid trip. It’s good and it’s lovely… until it’s THE DEATH OF ALL HAPPY THOUGHTS. It was organized into vignettes with silent-movie-esque titles and descriptions; each would begin with Darryl Hannah whispering things like, “Looking into the eye of the Blue Whale is like looking into the soul of god” and close with, “But we’re killing it. It will soon be extinct. How many are left? Not many! Our grandchildren will never see it. And it’s YOUR FAULT. DO SOMETHING. NEVERMIND, THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO.” I almost started weeping because my life has ultimately led to the rapidly shrinking manatee population off the coast of Florida. Only three hundred are left! Aaron was gripping my hand and alternately muttering, “wow” and “oh no… oh no.” My happiest moment was when he leaned forward to pet the fluke of a whale, only to pat a man's bald spot in the next row. At the end of the movie, someone who sounded suspiciously like Sting, bemoaned the loss of the dolphins and whales in a specially written song.



I will not go into what took us to Planet Hollywood. Maybe because there were no rational steps, but only the exhausted aftermath of a Day with Children. Let’s just say that it was a blur and suddenly I was in a shabby room with life-sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle statues and faded red carpet. The waitress gave us an orientation on our way to the table—“to the right, you have your ladies’ room, to the left you have the gift shop…”

At the table, Eric said, “Do you want to leave?” And I remember viciously saying, “YESYESYESYES.” And him going, “Really?” And the waiter walking up to take our order. It was like eating dinner in a Lou Reed song. There were crack addicts and tourists. There was a naked Jeff Goldblum hanging in a glass case above us. At the next table, a fat little girl was screaming, “MOMMA, STOP STEALIN MY FREAKIN FRIES!!” Charmed, I’m sure.




*The kids, by the way, are flying with me to New York Monday, so I can put them on a plane to Hawaii the next. There's no telling how badly I'll handle this in public. Am envisioning a dignified quiet on my end, but it's like how you envision break-ups to be (you know, the visions in which you're so stoic that people comment suspiciously on your self-reliance and pride). Only to find yourself swimming vats of bourbon and finally washing up at a bar to shout drunkenly at the crowd in the middle of your karaoke rendition of Free Bird.