Labor Day no longer means an end to the vacation season, of course. Like wearing white or buying watermelon, vacations are available at any time of year. In fact, we are moving right into the season when the snowbirds will start their annual migration away from snowy parts of the world to those with sun and surf. (Of course, we have apparently also made snow in Miami possible: nothing is beyond the reach of our aspirations.)
So it is not unseasonal for us to discuss one of the themes in what we could call Public Service Announcement postcards. These are postcards which remind us of the perils and dangers of taking a vacation. We have stacks of postcards which cartoonists prepared to make sure we understand one thing about going away for a week or so for R&R.
If no one is biting your butt, are you even ON vacation?
Context makes it obvious that vacationers are not PLANNING to be bitten where they’re sittin’. Most react with shock, or at least surprise, kind of like those of us who go out into the open air for a week of sunshine and are amazed to find ourselves sunburnt.
Even creatures without noticeable teeth join in the fun. Is this just a manifestation of the resentment the locals feel about the Summer Folk? Of course, the creatures involved in recreational nipping are not those who benefit from the tourist dollar.
Perhaps it all stems from a Puritanical vestige in our brains which not only disapproves of taking time off but also those scandalous bathing suits which put so much tempting flesh on display. Perhaps, it is hinted, the vacationer DESERVED that sore situpon.
See, if some people were at home sewing samplers and shelling peas instead of venturing outdoors offering a target, they would feel better sitting down to that well-earned dish of gruel come dinnertime.
It could be simple slapstick. I have a certain number of tourists in canoes unaware that they are about to paddle themselves right over a waterfall. MORE cartoonists prefer to pile disaster upon disaster, suggesting that out of every two canoers, at least one will have his belt break at a dangerous point in the proceedings.
But, comedy or commentary, we are given to understand that all of this is unavoidable. A vacation will always bite you in the behind. At the beach it’s the fish and crabs, on the river it’s bees. And, as noted hereintofore, the forest brings its own danger to the derriere.
Perhaps it’s no more than the circle of life. Bared fangs, bared bottoms: Nature observes a balance.
I retract my previous statement. These postcards are NOT a reproof to those workers who take time off. They are a tribute to the human spirit. We KNOW, because we have seen it in postcards (our greatest expression of truth and reality before electronic social media came along) that if we go on vacation, Fate will make us pay. And still we have the courage to take the risk. We’ll manage this by the seat of our pants.
Blogsy Babbles 