Dad, I hate it here.

A heart-warming modern Thanksgiving tale

I took my kids on vacation over Thanksgiving this year. They hated it. I could tell they hated it from the way they acted. But the real giveaway was four of them telling me separately, “Dad, I hate it here.” The other two kids just cried.

Vacation when I was a lad usually meant a battlefield or museum or monument dedicated to why things are. So I’m kind of a sucker for history. By ‘kind of’ I mean that approximately 96% of my self-worth stems from knowing a few more answers than the next guy on trivia night. Plus my wife and I can barely, and I mean barely, manage 6th grade math (We tested it last week. Ugly). So my kids have a pretty low ceiling as physicists. And that's ok - it's why God invented Social Studies. Without it I'd be doomed to a middling intellect at best.

So kids, a history vacation it is!

That sudden familiar sound of teen angst cracked the air like a musket ball on a crisp fall morning. “What? Dad, NO!!!”

But I didn't pay any attention. And off we went in the great American tradition of battling I-95 on Thanksgiving weekend.

To their credit, these six are no passive subjects. In another great American tradition, they resisted like Patriots, making each excruciating mile was worse than the last for the King and Queen of that passenger van.

It would be hard to overstate how deep it cut that my kids wanted no part of my vicarious re-living. How could they be so selfish, so uncaring, so detached from our hallowed history? It has to be the public school! It has to be those video games! It has to be, gulp, the way we are raising them! So ran the thoughts through my head over this vacation - four straight days of private torment.

And then the phone rang.

Me: Oh, hi mom.

My mom: How's your vacation?

Me: It's fine but the kids hate it. They aren't like we were.

My mom: Oh, you hated it there too. You wouldn't shut up about it. But I didn't pay any attention.

Every person in this photo is lying.