So as some of you may or may not know, over Winter break my family and I, about 15 of us, took a trip down to Cancun to catch some sun, waves, and apparently very strong winds. Now, these Ditk-family vacations are usually extremely entertaining, but never has the trip began before we even left our homes for the airport, but boy oh boy did it begin prematurely this time!
It all started about 3 days before departure when my father was ironing out the details for his “trip to Florida” to fix up my ESM’s mother’s apartment. Things started getting weird when people would ask them “how long are you staying in Florida? When will you return?” and to answer the question my ESM would say “we’ll talk about it later” and then chuckle to herself.
There was a raging suspicion within my family that my father and ESM were really going to Cancun and just not admitting it because they wanted it to be a SURPRISE. This was both confirmed and ruined when I found my father’s trip itinerary on the coffee table in our den, though even after I confronted him about it, he still denied the trip and said “oh that’s not mine” or “that’s from another year”…I saw the date. Regardless, he wasn’t giving in.
It wasn’t until the next morning, the morning after my father and ESM “left for Florida” that it was confirmed he really “left for Cancun”. I received a series of text messages complaining about the hotel they were staying at, which would be the same hotel we would be staying at once we got to Cancun the next day. My father left his iphone charging at home and ased if I could bring it to Cancun for him, way to stay undercover dad, I applaud your effort. He then claimed “this place is disgusting, and smells like mold. Your aunt really picked a real winner this time, way to go.” Etc… Of course, I happened to be with that very aunt later that day so I showed her the messages and we decided to have a little fun with it. We told him thanks for the information, and that we were calling the travel agent to make a last minute change to our trip and go to Aruba again instead. He told us he’d be down the road at the Ritz Carlton. Obviously he didn’t buy this, but it was still fun.
My father then made a rather strange request–he asked me to buy him a liter of Grey Goose and a fifth of Jack Daniels at the airport and bring it to the hotel. Apparently the all-inclusive hotel we were staying at didn’t have either beverage, and my father and step-brother apparently needed them as companions to be able to enjoy the hotel, and trip as a whole. Needless to say, I obtained the alcohol for them and was stuck riding in an airplane for 3 hours with 2 huge bottles at my feet. (the store ran out of liter bottles of Grey Goose, so I had to get him 1.75 liters instead, keep that in mind for later) The men sitting next to me on the plan saw the bottles at my feet and were giving me odd looks, they must have been jealous of the little “party-in-a-plastic-bag” I had laying at my feet. Serves them right.
We landed in Mexico, and stood on a boiling hot, long line at customs for about 30 minutes-Welcome to Mexico! We arrived at our hotel, and it seemed very nice. Immediately we knew my father was just busting our chops. Later that evening, once we were all settled in, I brought my father his alcohol, and his face lit up. He instantly started ordering glasses of lime juice and making his on Grey Goose Gimlets, his favorite drink. I left for a little while and returned for dinner to find the bottle about half full. I was shocked. Not so much at my father’s behavior, but at the fact that he was able to polish off half of a 1.7f liter bottle of Goose and still be alive to not-remember it.
We all gathered inside the restaurant and sat down. It was a Brazilian restaurant with just food and drinks, but we also got entertainment at dinner–in the form of my father. He was slurring his words, laughing at everything, sitting alone because my ESM got tired of him poking her so she moved, and most of all just making obscene comments, one after another. We were eating soup when my father yelled at my cousin “stop eating your soup so dramatically! You’re calling attention to every bite!” later on he apparently promised to buy her a new macbook, a promise that was neither remembered nor kept by my father, but it was surely remembered by my cousin! Then my other cousin stood up to go to the bathroom and my father shouted “SIT DOWN!” for no reason. But perhaps the best moment of the night was when my father bashed on my 13 year old, male cousin, about his faint upper-lip hair. My father referred to him as “The Rican” and kept putting his finger under his nose when he saw him to make a faux-mustache to mock my cousin. That’s when my father and step-brother left for a minute. They then came back laughing with the biggest smiles on their faces, and my dad had liquid all over his face. They went to the bar to take a shot. NOW my father was surely doomed.
The rest of the night doesn’t really exist, at least not for my father. Shortly after dinner, he disappeared (we later found out he just passed out in his hotel room) and we thought he was surely lying in a ditch somewhere, possibly on the beach. The next day my family and I spent explaining to my father exactly what went on the night before, and he didn’t believe any of it to say the least, mainly because he didn’t remember a single moment of it. Eventually, after laughing at himself, he came to terms with the fact that the stories we told him were indeed true…we still make fun of him for his comment about my 13 year old cousin’s mustache.
Blame it on the Goose, I guess.
(More Mexico stories coming soon!)
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