The third day we spent on vacation was my actual birthday. To celebrate the day, we planned to spend a few hours wandering the scenic streets of downtown Carmel By The Sea. That’s the actual name of the town, and there are unlimited t-shirts and hats in every store with “Carmel By The Sea” printed on them to prove it.
My daughter, EM1, who had delayed the departure from our hotel every day since we arrived in Monterey, promised that on my birthday we would be on our way to Carmel no later than eleven o’clock in the morning.
At twelve-thirty, we were in the truck and headed for Carmel.
It was our earliest start all week, so I’m going to call that one a win.
The drive took 25 minutes. Ten minutes to get to Carmel, then fifteen minutes circling and trying to find a place to park. Once we had the truck situated in a parking lot that we were (almost) certain was free and would not result in our vehicle being towed away, we went for a little jaunt.
The first order of business, as it is every day with my family, was to find food. Whenever we travel, we always seem to start our day by roaming randomly like a pack of seagulls circling a dump, looking around for anything edible. We found a tiny cottage-looking place called The Tuck Box, that advertised breakfast, brunch, and tea. It was an adorable restaurant with barely enough room to fit five tables and a couple chairs.
We went in.
A friendly young woman greeted us, then said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t accept credit cards. It’s cash only. Do you have cash?”
Affronted that she had basically accused me of being too poor to eat in her mouse-sized restaurant, I blurted, “Of course I have cash. Who doesn’t have cash?”
She seated us and I spent the next five minutes making the kids dump out their purses looking for enough loose change to have breakfast. Now that I had made an ass of myself, I did not want to have to slink out with my tail between my legs, making some lame excuse like, “I forgot I have a doctor’s appointment in five minutes, otherwise I would totally stay and give you cash like a normal person. Because I have cash in my pockets. Lots of it. You should see how much cash is there.”
Fortunately, we were able to scrape together enough to stay. The kids had plenty of money. Probably from all those years of keeping my change whenever I gave them $20 to buy a three-dollar item.
Breakfast was actually quite nice. And expensive. But we had enough to pay for it. I even left a couple of spare nickels for a tip.
After breakfast, we did a little sight-seeing. There was a lot to see, but most of it was the same thing over and over. I don’t want to claim that Carmel is pretentious as far as towns go, but let’s just say all we found were art galleries and wine tasting rooms, occasionally broken up by pubs, coffee houses, and clothing boutiques.
See? Not pretentious at all.
After about thirty minutes, I was done with art galleries. It was time to hit the stores.
The rest of the day was a shopping day. It was my birthday, after all. Buying stuff on your birthday is a thing, right?
Only problem was, I wasn’t buying stuff for me. I spent a lot of money on my birthday, but somehow it was my wife and kids accumulating presents while I did it. For example: my wife got a lovely, four-hundred-dollar purse. My daughter, EM1, got a slightly smaller purse for only $200. The day before, I bought EM2 a $300 pair of sunglasses after EM1 discovered the glasses she wanted were already gone. Both girls got new shoes, shirts, sweaters with “Carmel By The Sea” emblazoned on them, sweaters without “Carmel By The Sea” emblazoned on them, shorts, tops, and assorted souvenirs.
And guess who got to carry the bags?
At one point, we were in a three-level, shopping complex. My wife and the girls were inside yet another clothing store. I had pretty much given up on life at that point and sat down on a bench in the courtyard, surrounded by pink, lavender, and gold-colored bags. An elderly couple strolled past while I was sitting there. They both gave me a good, long look, then began to laugh.
The man waved a hand at me and said, “Get used to it.” They both laughed again, then disappeared into an elevator which I assume took them straight down to Hell. Or at least down to the first floor of the shopping mall which was where the coffee shop was located.
We were only in Carmel for a few hours, but it was a long, tiring day. I wasn’t completely ignored, however. I got a baseball cap.
It was on sale.
Oh, and lest I forget, EM2 also bought me a churro from a street vendor while we were walking through a farmer’s market. She paid for it with her own money. After the sunglasses, shoes, clothing, and multiple meals she had received over the past three days, a one-dollar fried stick of bread seemed to her to be a fair trade. More than fair, apparently, since while I was eating it she looked at me and said, “Well?”
“Well, what?” I asked.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
And like a stripper on a pole who is just happy to be receiving attention of any kind, I said, “Thank you.”
We returned to the hotel, and that was pretty much the end of the day. We all ended up going to bed early that night. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked.
We all went to bed early because EM1, the lovely child that had consistently delayed our morning departures by two or more hours every morning during our vacation, needed to be at work the next day in Sacramento by eleven o’clock in the morning. This necessitated a departure no later than 6 AM in order to get her home in time to make it to work.
Amazingly, we did succeed in leaving that morning on time. We got the truck packed and were headed to Sacramento as the sun rose over the hills to the east. Five minutes into the drive home, everybody was snoring in their seats, fast asleep, while I drove and sang quietly to myself:
“Happy Birthday to me…”
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