When I was a teenager/young adult, my family would go on these very nice vacations around the holidays. Once we got to whatever resort there was, I would pretty much see my parents at breakfast and dinner and that's about it. The rest of the time I'd find whatever group of younger people existed and hang out with them the whole time. This caused some occasional difficulties, like when we were supposed to leave for the airport and instead of packing I went with the other kids and drank several pina coladas instead of packing. That incident is now a family legend, but overall, it worked very nicely.

Needless to say, when my kids were younger I used to look forward to the days when they became teenagers and would go off by themselves when we were on vacation, leaving my wife and I to relax and spend some time together.

However, like everything else, this type of thing has been ruined by us baby boomers. Thanks to years of participating only in organized, parent-managed activities, my kids and all the other teenagers I've observed over the years stick with their families. I cannot think of a single instance where my kids, who are 16 and 19, have wandered off or just decided that they didn't want to hang out with their parents. Maybe my brain is muddled by the bright sunshine, but I seem to remember that back at home, our presence is considered more of an intrusion than a necessity.

What it comes down to for me is that if I want some quiet time, I either have to get up before everyone else or announce that I want to go do something that I know nobody else wants to do. The latter is harder than you'd think though, and I sometimes suspect if I said I wanted to go to Pick Up and Snuggle Disgusting Creature Land, that my kids would still rather do that than be left to their own devices.

I'm quite sure that the difference is generational, that because my play time when I was a kid consisted of walking outside, seeing if anyone else was there, and then knocking on doors if there wasn't anyone, I was ready to act in a similar fashion on vacation. Now, in the age of playdates and Mommy and Me, the idea of independently finding your own fun is foreign. I think that's a shame and it reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies, State and Main. Discussing country living, one of the characters says that they make their own fun, because "If you don't make your own fun it's not fun, it's entertainment." Wise words, I think.