I Love You. Here's 10 Bucks

I was waiting in line at a McDonald's today and overheard a few kids yapping about their summer vacations. One of the kids said, "We have to go away next week." A girl replied, "We haven't gone anywhere...This is the best summer ever."

You hear it all the time from friends and morning show anchors: "The kids need a vacation...We need some family time...The kids are going to love it."

Hogwash.

Looking back on my childhood, I discover that McDonald's Kid is right. The best summer was a summer without Big Vacation. No sitting in the backseat of a car for ten hours a day. No fighting with your brother every five minutes. No being told to "keep it down back there." No sleeping in the same hotel room as your mom and dad (this was always a rip off – they got the queen size, I got the pull out couch). No posing for pictures in front of yet another statue of some dead guy.

Maxim: Kids don’t go to Niagara Falls because they want to see Niagara Falls. They go because you shove them in the car.

The best summer a kid can have is a summer without their parents. Oh, sure, kids love the free room and board, but they only love their parents until they become a teenager. Up until then it’s all snuggles and kisses and catch. Then puberty hits and for the next eight years parents are lame. When you're a baby, parents are parents. When you're an adult, parents are friends. When you're a teenager, parents are the cops, prosecution, and parole officer all rolled into one.

When I was a kid there used to be these dire warnings about Latch Key Kids. You’d see them on TV all the time. Parents were told that working late and leaving their kids alone bordered on abuse. The commercials would have ominous music and show some kid unlocking the door and entering a big creepy house. Then they’d cut to a shot of the kid sitting on the front porch, despondently looking down the street, hoping for mom and dad to come home and give him a hug.

Yeah, right. I didn't get it. For one, I didn't know what a latch key was. We just called them keys. For another, what was so wrong with being alone in the house? Whenever I got home from school, an empty house meant two hours of cartoons and no homework. My personal nirvana was when my parents would “go out for a while." They'd leave ten bucks on the table, tell me to be good, and take off. I'd jump for joy.

Three whole hours without parents felt like paradise. That ten dollars represented a Whopper and fries, a VHS horror movie, and a few quarters left over for Pac Man. I’d eat my fill at the local fast food joint, play some video games at the convenience store, then scare myself with a copy of The Exorcist, and then – the sound of the car in the driveway. End of the night. Twilight of the Latch Key Kid. Damn.

Whole weekends without parents were beautiful. These came along once you were old enough not be stuck with grandma. Forty-eight hours of solitude. Unbelievable. TV, and macaroni and cheese, and movies, and TV, and frozen pizza, and video games, and TV, and enough soda to kill. All that for twenty bucks. You can’t find deals like that anymore.

You'll never hear it from Dr. Spock, but Family Vacation is overrated. Want a happy kid? Buy them off. Turn the tables and say you're going to give them some peace and quiet. They’ll love you for it.