www.evanjonesmusic.com
My oldest daughter Tara was 22 before we went on our first real family vacation. I mean, we had gone to visit the grandparents and cousins, and had stayed over night in a hotel a few times. But, I had been a college student with children and we were very poor in those years. We had no money for things other than necessities. And vacations seemed frivolous to us then. In fact, the first 8 years after college, we were still struggling. I had never realized all the stuff you need when you buy your first house (having lived in apartments all my adult life), and the money that you make doesn’t go as far as you would think. Buying our first home, a car that wasn’t 20 years old, furniture, lawn mowers, (I could go on and on…but you know what I mean don’t you), ate up all my income.
It was actually 8 years into my career, and 22 years after our first daughter was born, that I had a little money to spend on a real family vacation. At least, it was money that I could spend without laying awake at night feeling completely guilty about it.
The place that all my children wanted to visit most, was Disney World. We made the arrangements, and after weeks of waiting, we were off.
Of course, there are many amazing sights, and exciting adventures, that a family of 5 can see at Disney World. And because it was my son’s 5th birthday, I wanted to make sure I got plenty of photographs for everyone to remember this first real “Jones Family vacation”.
I happened to notice there were a lot of characters dressed up running around the park. Every one I saw, I tried to get the children next to so that I could take a picture. It was with that goofy dog (a pun!) that this story revolves around.
I saw a big dog standing over by a crowd and said to my son “Hey, there’s Pluto over there. Hurry up and we’ll get a picture”. He looked over and said “Dad, don’t you know anything. That’s not Pluto, that’s Goofy!”. I looked again, and of course he was right. It was Goofy. I said, “OK, hurry up and I’ll get your picture with Goofy!” He ran over and I took a snapshot (my son actually had a Goofy shirt on and I didn’t notice it until I looked at the print a couple weeks later!).
A couple days and theme parks later I saw him again and said “Hey, there’s Pluto again, do you want to get another picture with him?” My son looked at the character again and said in disgust “Dad, that is not Pluto, that is Goofy and I already have a picture with him!” By golly he was right again, it was Goofy (I never did get to see Pluto during the whole vacation!).
I had forgotten about these events after returning home, and after a couple weeks had passed, things returned to plain old normal.
One day, after school, I struck up a conversation with my son. I said “How was school today? Did you do anything fun? What classes did you have and what did you learn today?”
My son thought for a moment and said, “Science was fun today. We learned about the stars and planets.” I said, “Tell me something interesting that you learned about them today”. He thought for a couple moments and said “Did you know that planet Goofy is the coldest planet?!”
A Day In The Life Of An Average American Family (Page 5)
Planet Goofy
 | ||||||
One day we were looking through Grandma’s many old photographs. My son noticed one of Grandma and Grandpa when they were younger. He looked at it in astonishment and casually said “Dad, here’s a picture of Grandma when she was new!”
When Grandma Was New
| ||||||
