I feel sorry for my wife. And not just because she has to put up with me and my bad jokes. \tI recently have learned that she suffered through a deprived childhood.<\/p>\n
As a child, Maria only went on one vacation. One. Uno. That\u2019s it. One trip to the beach when she was little and nothing else.<\/p>\n
I love my wife\u2019s parents, but wonder what made them abuse her like that.<\/p>\n
Compared to that, I lived a life of luxury. We went to the beach pretty much every year and took other assorted vacations. That old station wagon got around.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t imagine living any other way. If we hadn\u2019t traveled, I wouldn\u2019t hear the story from my siblings about the tour guide at Plymouth Rock again and again and again and again.<\/p>\n
Without vacations, we wouldn\u2019t have stayed in the same hotel as a minor league baseball team in Montreal when I was a kid. I went down a floor or two with a brother and a sister to get ice and drinks for our room.<\/p>\n
As we waited for the elevator, we heard a lot of noise. It got louder and louder until the elevator door opened and revealed a car full of baseball players. Drunk baseball players.<\/p>\n
They growled at us and made faces. My brother took off like a shot. My sister and I just backed up against the wall until the elevator door closed. We caught the next car and made it to the room safe and sound.<\/p>\n
I feel bad that my wife doesn\u2019t have memories like that. She didn\u2019t get to spend a portion of her childhood riding backwards in the \u201call the way back\u201d of a station wagon up and down the eastern seaboard.<\/p>\n
But it gets worse. Maria was cleaning out the attic the other day and found an old receipt. It was from the first color TV her family owned.<\/p>\n
They bought it in 1983.<\/p>\n
I think families who didn\u2019t have color TV by 1983 were forced to buy one by the government to end the suffering across America.<\/p>\n
Again, this makes me seem like the kid from \u201cSilver Spoons.\u201d We had our first VCR four years before that. Of course the thing was the size of a modern-day washing machine, but we loved it.<\/p>\n
I can understand the no vacations thing. They cost money and take time and can bring out the worst in some people. But no color television?<\/p>\n
I know I had a TV in my room by then, but it may have still been a black and white set. If it was color, I feel guilty now.<\/p>\n
I have asked a lot of questions to try and understand this situation. Her father had a good job. They didn\u2019t live in poverty. She didn\u2019t grow up in a communist country.<\/p>\n
They just didn\u2019t have color television. I guess it takes all kinds to make the world go around. I\u2019m just glad she survived the ordeal without any lasting damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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