We go to no outside restaurants, avoid all water slides and rollercoasters and have visited the Pink Dolphin novelty store only once, on a cold November weekend, when it was closed. Our friends cannot believe this. We're naturally defiant, I tell them. We take vacations to be bored, not excited. Ants are excited.
Rocks are bored.
At home, we're ants. On vacation, we're rocks. It's a good philosophy. It has kept us from losing limbs and lives in egotistical treks toward the peak of Everest and has saved us entire months that we otherwise would have spent waiting in lines to enter restaurants that employ falsely giddy young people to serve us overpriced, mediocre food. Ask anybody who lives by the water when they like it most, and they will say it's when the tourists leave and the commotion peters out and they're left feeling close to nature.