Everything I need to know I learned on vacation

Vacations (pt. 1)
Every summer when I was growing up my family would go on a one or two week vacation. I always looked forward to it, no matter the destination. I was always excited about the destination, usually because it was somewhere I’d never been before. But really, it was the idea of traveling, of camping, of having adventures away from home that meant the most to me.
Robert Fulghum wrote a long time ago that everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten. Like him, I learned a lot in kindergarten. But some of the most important lessons I ever learned were learned through vacations with my family, and they are lessons that serve me well today. Here are a few of them.

Don’t count on things going the way you planned.

It wouldn’t have been a family vacation if something didn’t go terribly wrong at some point. It’s good to plan, and good planning goes a long way towards success. But you can’t always anticipate that the water pump on your Suburban is going to fail in BFE, Kansas. Sitting in an un-air-conditioned service station in the middle of July for 8 hours may not be what you originally planned for the day, but it is now part of the trip so you might as well embrace it as best you can.

No matter what, there’s no reason to panic.

There’s a tornado heading for your pop-top camper? No problem…just get on the floor to hold the camper down. (not a good idea, fyi). The tent your children are sleeping in is about to be blown into the lake by high winds and driving rain? Don’t panic, get back out there and pound the tent stakes back into the ground (also not a good idea)! Your husband just cantered on a horse into a tree trunk? OK, panic a little. And then get him to the hospital.
Everything can be done more efficiently as a team.

There was more than one occasion when the slowly sprinkling sky was threatening to open up into a downpour within the next five minutes. A four-member family that each knows their jobs when putting up the camper will have time to spare in this situation.

You may not be able to choose the other passengers in your car on this road of life, but you can still treat them with respect, tolerance, and love.
This one is a good lesson but not an easy lesson. My sister and I were about as different as oil and water and we mixed just about as well. But things between us always went a lot smoother when we each were practicing a measure of respect and tolerance.

The stranger the adventure, the better the memories and stories that come from it.

Life is boring without some risks and a healthy adventure every now and again. What are you going to tell your grandkids when they ask for a story? What about the other people in the nursing home, when you’re old and boney? Would they rather hear about the hours spent in a cubicle answering e-mails under florescent lights or about the time you had to ditch the canoe because you were trapped in some fast water and were heading directly for the low-hanging tree with a thicket of branches that threatened to knock your head off and break every bone in your body?