Of Tan Lines and Lines in the Sand...What the Hell is a Manana Anyway...

My in-laws had been in Mexico for two weeks by the time got there and their tans were already well developed when Izzy went upstairs to get changed with her Oma.
Izzy:"Oma, your skin is really dark."
Oma: Well we've been here for a while already, I'm nice and tanned."
Izzy:"Oma, it looks like you are wearing a white bathing suit with nipples."



Ah the Mexico house...Buried by snow and suffocated by cold and here we finally are. Sun, sand and sea. The people are warm and friendly and the margaritas are as cold as a really cold non insulting or derogatory thing. It's rich and fattening food and cocktails most nights and bagpipes at the setting of the sun...
It's living like the rich folk. It's the way we will winter if this column ever gets into the right hands (Huge Wink Wink to the powers that be). Honestly, the place is enormous and it is gorgeousity made real. It virtually defies description and this was never meant to be a travel brochure but to those who have not made it down this way, it is well worth the trip.






Now I have been on many planes many times and been trapped with many screaming brats and I have to say my children are angels. Really. Whining, crying, shouting, burping, farting, insolent children tend embarass my kids.
"Daddy, why is she acting like that?" Isobel asked me about a young girl that was kicking up a big fuss while we were in the air.
"I don't know honey. I just don't get it." was my reply. "You don't do that, at all."
"No, I don't do that." she said. I'm positive there was a smirk of pride behind it.
Even during take off and landing, the traditional periods of wailing children, Izzy and the Boy are silent or playing quietly. It is nothing we have done. No threats of switches from the first bush we see after touching down, they have always been a joy to fly with. Other adults have complimented us on our well mannered children. Really. After landing however, our delightful, well mannered angels disappear and two seething cauldrons of avarice and obstinance bubble up out of tarmac and sink their sunscreen soaked talons into our wallets.
I don't know what it is about this place that seems to bring out the worst in the children but we are starting to notice a pattern. If we ask one of them, either of the to do something, you can bet that we will get the opposite of what we want or outright refusal. And it is nothing new. For as long as I have been coming here (Mrs. Narrator and the Boy have been coming here for three years previous to Izzy and I joined the fray) the Boy has refused sunscreen in much the same way that one would refuse to be smeared with feces on a hot summer's day. It is a daily ritual and I cannot imagine that it was any different before Izzy and I were here.
Isobel doesn't mind the sunscreen in fact, it has become a game for her. Put a little on Izzy, put a little on Daddy. Put a little on Daddy, put a little on Izzy. She just doesn't listen, to anyone or anything. Maybe the sun is in her ears? She found a dvd of a previous years visit to the Mexico house and she had been watching it religiously for weeks leading up to our departure. Two things on it are crystal clear. 1) The piping is horrendous in spite of the moustache I thought made me look more like a real piper and 2) There is a scene of Isobel asking if she can drop a leaf over the balcony and Mrs. Narrator saying no. At which point Izzy drops it anyway and just for good measure pushes it off the ledge to make sure it fell. She then turns to the camera with a look that say "What?"
We were at the pool today (all that ocean and my kids want to hang at the pool.) and it more or less dawned on me what happens to the kids once we cross into Mexican air space. My kids are not stupid and clearly never have been and to that end they have us sussed out. Our bluff has been called. Izzy swam around in the pool and I told her it was time to get out.
"C'mon you," I said.
"No." she said.
"Pardon me?" I asked.
"I don't wanna get out, I wanna stay and swim!"
"It's time to get out now," I said getting out of the pool.
She didn't move, even as I started to walk away. I told her she would go back to the condo and spend some time in her room but even that didn't move her. I relented and got back in the pool in an effort to get her to move. She finally did and then it dawned on me. They had both found a place where they could push it beyond where they could ever push it before. What was I going to do, leave her in the pool? Could we really turn the plane around and go back home? Would we really leave the Boy in the condo by himself if he didn't get his god-damned sunscreen on?
No, of course not. And somewhere through all of this growling and posturing, the kids figured out it was just that. Piss and hot air and not a lot of actual punishment behind it. Even the grandparents who are normally the keepers of the peace are being blown off like so much chaff.
The funny thing is that nobody seems to doing much about it...the kids aren't doing anything especially harmful and the adults aren't doing anything especially overbearing and it isn't anything but especially cold at home and it is everything and especially warm here and well there is always Mañana...