Summer is on the horizon and the teenagers are asking where we’re going on vacation. I haven’t told them that the question is not where but whether—as in whether we are taking you. As teens they are more demanding, setting moratoriums on seeing shrines and lingering at dinner. They complain that no one understands when the crazy husband is joking—they were mortified when he asked the waiter whether they’d hire them to wash dishes to pay off our dinner tab, and they call his banter with airport employees a matter of “national security.” I confess to some tense moments when our 14-year old son brought the swine flu to Tokyo and we spent our vacation time in a research hospital—I definitely messed up when I called the hotel doctor, who turned us in, as my son warned me he would.

I feel pressure on vacation to keep everyone entertained. No longer can you just park the kids on a beach, where they used to dig and eat sand all day long. My dad always said that at age 12.5, the friends become the priority, and this has proven to be true—sometimes what your parents say is true, although it often takes decades to realize it.

After the swine flu in Tokyo we braved the World’s Fair in China. We got three days in Asia—that’s all we had between the kids’ summer camps—John said it was going to prepare them for future business travel. There were so few Westerners at this world’s fair that people were taking our photos. At the entrance, a surly female guard patted down our pre-teen, and upon finding her tutti frutti juicy lip gloss, she thrust it back at her, saying “try it!” Please. Did she think the fuchsia tube of gloss was explosive, and if she did, was she planning to finish off my 12-year old on the spot? Once through the gates, John steered us toward the Somalia pavilion to find some pirates. We were discouraged from going to the U.S. pavilion—I still wonder what they had in there. I was amazed by how the Chinese citizens would wait in line for hours—seven or more—because it’s very difficult to leave China and many people come from the countryside—their chance to see what other countries are like. Americans were not painted in the best light—apparently we eat more beef, I learned. Calorie consumption was totaled and compared, and was not favorable to the West.

So John asked our guide to take us to “the Axis of Evil Pavilions.” Our guide was not amused and neither were the kids. When John asked more specifically about the North Korea booth (he wasn’t joking, trust me), the guide said that the line was too long. In the Chinese pavilion, where the guides actually want to take you or may be paid to do so, but you still have to wait three hours even with a reservation, John refused to sit and watch the mandatory film about modern China. In his words, “the required film was a heavy handed propaganda film, full of rapturous minorities with perfect skin and teeth straight from central casting, engaged in backbreaking manual labor while experiencing the ecstasy of building the new Chinese utopia,” and he wasn’t going to watch it even if we had to escape the theater, the kids disowning us.

Since that trip, the teenagers have been refusing to leave the continent, but we finally pleased them when we took them to a family summer camp in a brisk, middle-of-nowhere spot in Canada, where it’s so cold you never wear the shorts you packed, you shoot bears with paintball guns, and river kayak in glacier melt after the staff sees you can Eskimo roll, which involves submerging your head in ice water when they tip over your kayak. Bins of red licorice and sour Jolly Ranchers abound in the lodge. A young teen paradise. Our tent neighbors were welcomed by a bear popping its head into their tent in the middle of the night after it drank the staff’s gin and ate all the paint balls (did you know they’re full of fish oil?). A Texan’s daughter was startled by a German man climbing into the public spa buck naked. I personally was most startled when a bear sprung out of the bushes outside the kids’ tent when I went to check on them before bed. After that, I never went over there, and the kids loved me for that. Because the camp has a bar and a spa (but no flush toilets), it’s referred to as “glamping.”

Mandatory Film China Pavillion — No Photos

Where to you suggest to take teens?  I don’t think our family will be glamping this summer.  I might just be glamping in a local bar.