Tell Them To Shut Up Before They Ruin Our Vacation

There is something tragically wrong with my family.

Actually with the kids. We are driving back from Michigan to Cincinnati and I'm in the back seat thinking about this last week together. Except for the kids, it was a fabulous family vacation.

Reminder: Marshal 16, Mimi 12 and Davis 4. Grand children.

Marshal and Mimi, if they were normal, should be awful on a family vacation. They should be moody, sullen, even angry that they were ripped from their friends, forced to travel ten hours, and then locked in a house with their parents and grand parents. Normal kids would hide in their vacation rooms, spending hours sending texts to their friends that trash the parents and grand parents who dreamed up the stupid idea of a family vacation with all its forced fun.

But these are clever kids. They tricked us by hiding their anger and resentment under a veneer of cheerful good humor, hoping to make us see their pain that way. Here's how they made our adult lives miserable. They talked and laughed with us. They hung around with us. They contributed to the conversations. They were funny. They were appropriately challenging when what the adults said didn't make sense. In other words, they talked. We are worried. This is not how it's supposed to be.

I saw Lisa Googling "Child psychiatrists" + Cincinnati, so I know she will take corrective action on Monday.

For Davis, age 4, it's normal to be talkative and happy. But even with that child there's a problem. We were on the porch one morning reviewing family history. We cried together talking about the family members who used to go on these vacations to Michigan, but who have been taken to heaven by the man in the pink nightgown. Davis came out on the porch, looked at our sad, crestfallen faces and shouted, "Let's play Wiffle ball!" Again, another abnormal child. Clearly an early sign of Asperger's.