In the story, A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid riffs on the idea of seeing Antigua from a tourist’s eyes. It is in essence a guided tour through that world from that perspective. She leads you unerringly through the good and bad, the real and the unwanted. She writes, “The thing you’ve always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not ugly all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day. From day to day, you are a nice person. From day to day, all the people who are supposed to love you on the whole, do.”
All of these words swirl around my thinking the days I spend on vacation. It hits me less in the beginning than in the end as I prepare to go home and return to my daily life and routine. I find myself realizing that the person I’ve been and those who are with me have been while on vacation is not necessarily great. I just walked into a situation where my boys (two by blood one by relation) were digging holes in the sand and waiting for someone to fall into the hole. It was originally explained to me as a small prank where their brother would step into a small depression that couldn’t hurt him, but I soon realized they’d made other holes that were not small. I immediately required them to seal these up.
What makes a person think its okay to set up someone like that? What is it about being away from home with the freedom to be anyone that leads many people to be the worst version of themselves? I worry about my kids when they are like this and I worry that it is more than just them.