Family Vacation

My parents were pretty broke up about me not being able to take a family vacation with them this year. See, I have a job and I'm expected to show up nearly every day. Somehow family vacation has fallen low on list of priorities, which is inevitable but a little sad. Especially since this year my younger brother has become almost completely human.

There are certain conventions that appear during every trip my family has taken, and each family member plays his or her part convincingly. We become caricatures of our normal at-home selves and each of our personality quirks becomes embellished in light of all the constant togetherness.

My brother travels under two alternating nicknames: Buttons and Mr. Thirsty. The former because there is no dial, button, lever or switch within his arm's length that is safe from his manual manipulation and the latter because he can drink his weight in water at a single meal.

Randy is known as Pockets. Each time he is called upon to retrieve an element that is crucial to the progress of our trip, be it visa, passport, credit card, reading glasses, map, etc. he panics and fondles every pocket on his person until he remembers he left it at that hotel we stayed in 2 nights ago before we took the overnight train to the city 800 miles south of the city where said crucial document is lying in some hotel room safe my brother programmed but has since forgotten how to open.