Dear Family,
Family lore holds that a 1970s trip to see some Indian ruins while we were in Utah for a Willis reunion had to be cut short when some boy (perhaps me, perhaps someone my age with a similar temperament) threw a fit because a) driving for hours to look at old rocks you’re not allowed to touch is objectively the most infuriatingly boring and frustrating thing a young male human could be subjected to, and b) the boy was given to understand that his family was going to see some “ruined Indians” — when none materialized, he melted down.
I have no firsthand memory of this experience. So uncertain of it am I that I had to Google whether any such ruins of note even exist in Utah. (They do!) I clearly remember Mom and/or Dad telling others the “ruined Indians” story in my presence on numerous occasions. I just don’t recall for sure whether I was the subject of it. (In my memory I am. But memories, especially childhood ones, are so unreliable. I wish I wrote more things down.)
Regardless, anyone who knew me as a young boy (and perhaps to a lesser extent, anyone who knows me now) would likely agree that the boy in the story sounds a lot like me. Ruining family vacations has always been kind of my thing. And even though I have no idea what the boy in the story was expecting to see exactly during his family’s trip to the ruined Indians, subjecting him to an ancient anthropological site could reasonably be considered an act of torture, and frankly, whatever fresh hell he put his parents through as a result, they had it coming.
My interest in ancient ruins has not evolved a great deal in the past half-century, but they no longer cast me into fits of rage. Not unlike post-impressionist art, women’s basketball, and swimming in a cenote, I find ancient ruins thoroughly unobjectionable, somewhat intriguing, and capable for holding my interest for anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes, which is longer than most things.
We got our fill both of cenote swimming and Mayan ruins during our spring break trip to Cancún this month. (And, relax, this paragraph is the only place in which I plan to go to the trouble of pretentiously adding whatever diacritical mark it is that you highfalutin Spanish speakers put over the u in Cancún.)
We were joined there by Ari (who came with us) and Hannah and Emma, who flew down from Utah. The five us squeezed into a 2-bedroom, 2-balcony, top-floor oceanfront villa. (Crystal and I took the bedroom with the king bed and threw the three “kids” — ages 25, 28, and 30 — into the one with two double beds. They didn’t complain about it, at least not to me.)
After a brief discussion of whether to call the body of water we were overlooking the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America, we ultimately decided to go with neither since it turns out Cancun is actually on the Caribbean. (Who knew? Maybe most people. I didn’t.) And so, while I have now been to the Caribbean four times in my life (that I can remember) and Hawaii thrice, I have still yet to stick my toe into the Gulf of Whatever We’re Calling It Now. I have no plans to.
We watched some pretty Caribbean sunrises from our balcony.
And at least one pretty sunset from a restaurant on the lagoon side.
We had a fun week and especially appreciated the opportunity to spend time with Hannah and Emma, who we don’t see a lot of. Like a lot of people, they find me irritating a lot of the time, but they love Crystal and Ari and it was fun being along for the ride.
Ari, as usual, had fun wowing little kids with their mermaid tail.
I couldn’t figure out how to make Ari’s GoPro camera work, but Hannah (I think) got the best underwater video of Ari swimming:
The mermaid had to rescued when we noticed a storm rolling in.
We stopped for a late lunch in the 16th Century city of Valladolid on the way back to Cancun from Chichen Itza (as virtually all tourists do). It’s a lovely place — capturing my attention and interest for nearly six full minutes!
The timing of trip meant that, for the third consecutive year, we spent Holy Week in an ostensibly “Catholic” country (France 2023, Nicaragua 2024, Mexico 2025). And for the third consecutive year, we did not see any of the vibrant processions that I associate with holy week in Catholic countries. It didn’t surprise me not to see any in France. I love France. France is the best. But when anyone asks what it was like to be a missionary there, my stock answer is, “Everyone’s Catholic and no one believes in God.” (Not strictly true, but not completely false, either.)
I thought we might see more holy week stuff in Nicaragua last year, but that country is currently being run by the same anti-Catholic dictator who was in charge there when I was in high school, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that we didn’t.
As for Mexico, in fairness, we spent most of our time there the resort area of Cancun (the so-called “hotel zone”) — it was lovely and fun but I can’t really say I feel like we experienced authentic “Mexico” (which is fine with me — we went for the beach, not for the culture). Still, it amused me when, while trying to make conversation with our Uber driver on Easter morning, I asked him how to say “Happy Easter” in Spanish.
He looked at me strangely and had to think for a few seconds before answering, “Felices Pascuas?” He inflected his voice upward at the end, as if he were asking me rather than telling me.
A few more seconds of silence passed, and he asked me, “Wait, is that today?”
But even absent the passion plays and related festivities, Cancun was a lot of fun. It’s not Hawaii (I doubt there’s any place like Hawaii — or, if we’re being pedantic, Hawai’i) but I can see us going back because it’s such an easy trip. We made the 3+ hour direct flight from BWI in style — on a completely full Southwest 737 MAX 8 with 43 children. (We only know the precise number because the flight attendant announced it.) “Family boarding” took what seemed like an hour and a half, and ordinarily I would have needed to be restrained to keep from breaking things. But as you may know, every Southwest plane has exactly two good seats — one exit row window seat on either side that basically has two full rows of legroom (the other exit row seats on Southwest aren’t noticeably any better than any of the other seats). I managed to score one of two money seats on the flight down AND the flight back, and so there could have been 100 kids on the plane and I wouldn’t have cared. I have earplugs and none of them would’ve been in my row.
It’s really quite remarkable how quickly I’ve gone from being a father of young children to being one of those loathsome people who believes young children should be banned from most public places.1
That might change if I ever become a grandfather.
But probably not.
Re-entry into the U.S. was almost frighteningly easy. We don’t have Global Entry or whatever it is that lets people jump the immigration queue. We had to wait with all the other unwashed shlubs in the U.S. citizens line. But still, when we got to the counter, we didn’t even have to take our passports out of our pockets. I just had to look into a camera. At which point the customs official smiled and said “Welcome home Mr. Johnson.”
(OK, so that last part about Ernie Johnson was a joke. But it’s true that we were granted access to the country based solely on our faces. So, I guess that’s the world we live in now.)
Speaking of which, Hannah told us that residents at the facility where she works can now opt in to having an A.I.-powered camera in their room capable of detecting when someone has fallen to the floor and automatically alerting staff. The new tech has resulted in a number of false alarms as the cameras, it turns out, are incapable of distinguishing between a fall victim and someone who is praying at their bedside. As Hannah points out, they obviously didn’t train the A.I. model in Utah.
Emma turned 30 the day before we all arrived in Mexico and learned while we were there that she had been hired as a professor at Grand Canyon University’s accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing “Learning Site” in Sandy, Utah.2 This made everyone happy, and so, now, neither she nor Hannah is doing what I think of as “traditional” nursing (i.e., gross stuff) but they both seem very happy where they are.
In other news, Sophie turned 23 this month and I am coming to the realization that my married children’s in-laws put considerably more effort into acknowledging my children’s birthdays than I put into their children’s birthdays. (That’s an awful sentence, but I’m too lazy to fix it, and I think you know what I mean.) You could even argue that my married children’s in-laws put more effort into my children’s birthdays than I put into my own children’s birthdays. But at least I know when their birthdays are. (My kids’ birthdays, not their spouses’ — I realize I just acknowledged Emma’s birthday in the last paragraph, but let’s be honest, I will have forgotten the date by next month. And I’m pretty sure Luke has already had a birthday this year, but I have no idea when that was. Sorry guys.)
Sophie and Luke also just finished their penultimate semesters at BYU. (They’re both set to graduate in December.) Luke, who I’m starting to think might be in a position to retire before I am, continues his full-time work as a financial adviser at ProFi (and posts to his personal LinkedIn more than literally anybody I know). Sophie is still figuring out what she’ll be doing this summer, but she is shaping up to have several good options to choose from.
They are also in the process of buying their first house(!) But I’ll let them tell you about that in their letter.
Finally, I got an email from a German debt collection law firm a couple of days ago purporting to represent the Avis Rental Car service at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris where I rented a car some two years ago. They are attempting to collect 92 euros for a traffic violation that I purportedly committed (which must have been was caught on video because, unlike while driving in Nicaragua the following year, where I was pulled over approximately every other day, I was never stopped by the cops in France).
I’m not overly worried about it, but I’m not sure what I’ll do. There’s a non-zero chance that it’s a scam. But if it is, the scammers have done a surprisingly good job impersonating an actual law firm, not to mention an inordinate amount of research into the details of a two-year-old car-rental transaction, just to get their hands on a hundred bucks (or whatever 92 euros is these days).
Also, I’m 100 percent certain that I’m guilty of whatever it is I’m alleged to have done. I’m a terrible driver (one of many reasons I prefer to bike everywhere) and so I’m inclined to think it’s all legit.
And so I’ll probably just pay it. I’d like to go back to Europe next year and, assuming they’re still admitting subjects of His Royal Highness King Donald into other countries by then, it would be nice not to have to worry about being apprehended at the border.
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly
- I don’t actually believe that children should be banned from most public places, but parents who let their kids cannonball into the hot tub and splash around while I’m in there like it’s just another baby pool should be sterilized.
- Neither Grand Canyon University’s main campus (in Phoenix) nor any of its various satellite locations appear to be within so much as a three-hour drive of the actual Grand Canyon. This probably shouldn’t annoy me as much as it does, but it does make me want to look into the feasibility of starting something called “Shenandoah University” with campuses in Raleigh and Baltimore.
I adore your sense of humor!