BoomerGirl Diary

No sane person would ever describe me, or any member of my immediate family, as laid-back. You have only to spend a few terrifying moments driving in the same car with us, or join us at home as we watch the Lakers lose, to know that we’re not easygoing people.

We don’t take things lightly. We don’t go with the flow. We emote. We get verbal. We judge harshly. We take it personally. We can’t help ourselves. We’re built this way. It’s a genetic flaw. We blame our ancestors. Every last one of them.

And so, the very core of our beings is tested whenever we visit the college boy up in Santa Cruz, the mellowest place on earth. This sleepy beachside town is the capital of laid-back. They invented the term. The vibe is uber-relaxed.

For stressed-out L.A. folk, it takes a while to adjust and downshift our thinking. A glass or two of Chardonnay helps us unwind, considerably. After all, the motto up there is “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.” We always do our best to oblige.

A few days into our latest visit, we started to get the hang of it. Of course, by then, we were seriously sleep-deprived, which may have added to our uncharacteristic, Zen-like stance: “It is what it is.”

Take the lovely mountain resort I selected for our stay. It came highly-recommended. The website photos looked inviting. Sadly, there were several key omissions. Not a mention of the paper thin walls that were insolated with vapor. Our youngest son was treated to a series of loud guttural noises, courtesy of the degenerates on the other side.

At 3 a.m., he felt obligated to share his discomfort with us. He barged into our connecting room and announced, “The people next door are listening to porn! And they’re moaning along with it.”

We could think of no immediate solution other than torching the hotel, pounding on the guilty party’s door and/or calling the front desk to complain. Had we been in New York, we would have done all three. But this was Santa Cruz, so we did nothing and felt sufficiently evolved. By the time we saw the house the college boy lives in with his four roommates, we were so exhausted that we overlooked the various shortcomings, death traps and health hazards on the premises. All we could do was nod our heads and smile vacantly.

“Oh, look, honey,” I said to my husband. “Look at the huge pile of shoes by the front door. I wonder how they tell them apart.”

“It’s a mystery,” he marveled, dozing off momentarily.

We ventured into the kitchen next. It was surprisingly clean. We applauded. Then something brown and furry scurried across the floor.

“Oh, look, honey,” I said to my husband, “there’s a cat.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not a cat, it’s a rat,” my husband explained.

“How cute,” I said, stepping over a tower of beer cans on my way upstairs.

“Oh, look, honey,” my husband said to me. “Look at all the mold on the bathroom floor.”

“I wonder how long it’s been there,” I said, eyeing my son sweetly.

The college boy shrugged. He had no idea. My husband proceeded to sanitize the entire house with Lysol. I supervised.

“You missed a spot,” I said. “There, and there, and over there.”

Later that day, we all went to see “The Love Guru” at the Cineplex. We left the pet rat back at the house to guard the property.

Five minutes into the movie, the sound went out. At first, it was fun to read Mike Meyers’ lips. Ten minutes later? Not so much fun.

We held out hope. We tried to stay positive. “It’s going to come back on,” we whispered. “Any minute now.”

The sound never came back on, not that anyone in charge of the theater even cared.

“These things happen,” said the ticket-taker at the door. That seemed to be the general consensus. Apparently, they had no system in place for random glitches. We could wait in line for a refund, we could come back later, or we could just forget the whole thing. We chose the last option. It was the laid-back thing to do. But laid-back doesn’t play that well in L.A. Laid-back feels funky and wrong. So we’ve packed up the mellow. We’ve put it all in storage. We’ll take it out of mothballs the next time we head up north. Every now and then, I suppose it’s good to chill. But it’s just as good to come back home, where you can be your grumpy, old, impossible self.