Free I Can Barely Take Care of Myself by Jen Kirkman Page B

Sting’s end credits song, “Russians.”
    I just happened to be wired to develop panic disorder, depression, and anxiety. Youth was wasted on the youngin my case—but I am not going to waste my middle age. In the past two years I’ve been lucky enough to have my work take me to London, Australia, and almost every state in America. It’s afforded me vacations in Paris, Mexico, and Hawaii. There are so many more places I want to see. I’ve relinquished my responsibilities as the world’s sole nuclear war worrywart, and the only child I want to indulgeright now is my inner one.
    A LOT OF my friends who have kids say to me, “We’d love to travel more and go out every night, but we have a child now. We got that out of our system in our twenties, so now it’s just time to settle down.” Well, I got nothing out of my system in my twenties and I’m excited about starting to put things in my system. I’m lucky that my friend Sarah doesn’t want kids either,and if she ever changes her mind, I’m going to push her down a flight of stairs.
    Sarah and I decided to take a trip to Maui together to ring in the 2012 New Year. We figured after we spent Christmas with our respective families, we’d then detox in Hawaii by cooking our skin in the sun and getting salty seawater in our eyes. We both write for Chelsea Lately as well as work on other projects, andwe travel a lot to dostand-up. We wanted a vacation where we could do absolutely nothing. (For parents who are reading this, “nothing” is that thing you will get to do once your kids leave for college, if they ever leave for college. I hear tuition is skyrocketing.)
    We opted to stay at the Grand Wailea Maui. It’s a family-friendly resort. We’re not opposed to families existing—we’re very generousthat way. Sarah and I were confident that we’d be undisturbed by screaming toddlers in the cabana we rented at the adults-only pool.

    See? There was even a sign at the entrance of the adult pool that clearly states as much. I don’t know anyone who dutifully and without question obeyed authority more than my parents and I when I was a child. That sign would have put the fear of God in us. If eight-year-old Jen had even walked near this sign on a family vacation, mymother would have grabbed my arm and harshly whispered, “Jennifah,don’t go near there, it’s for rich people who will have their own private security. They’ll have us arrested and we’ll have to spend the rest of the vacation in the town jail run by the local mafia.”
    Seems like kids these days (and their parents) aren’t scared of some words engraved on a placard. On our first day in Maui, there was not one adult in the adult pool because there were so many kidsswimming (aka peeing) in the four-foot-deep waters. There were tween boys in the hot tub! Just in case you think I’m not being fair, just in case you’re thinking to yourself, Jen, let the children enjoy a refreshing chlorine dip in the hot Maui sun! They’re on vacation and they’re just kids. This is the time of their lives! I’ll show you Exhibit A (and the only exhibit that I have to offer): Onthe next page is a map of the pools at the Grand Wailea hotel in Maui:
    The only pool for people eighteen and over is the Hibiscus Pool. Children have access to a lazy river, rapids, a water slide, a scuba pool, Pool no. 1, Pool no. 2, Pool no. 3, and even a pool with a swim-up bar for their twenty-one-and-over parents! There was no swim-up bar at the Hibiscus Pool. There was no bar at all. Justa few harried waitresses trying to deliver watered-down drinks while rogue toddlers tripped them up.
    My legs were sore from being cramped on a long flight and because I’m thirty-eight now and beginning to feel the fact that I’m slowly rotting from the inside. I wanted to sit in the hot tub but I couldn’t because I was self-conscious about sitting in a hot tub with a bunch of twelve-year-old boyswho would see me in my bikini. If I wanted to