Final Essay Draft #2

Alex Franolich

Prof. Carol Severino

HONR:1300:0016

12 November 2019

Sleepless in Alaska

Looking back, I realize how often I go on trips concerning my dad’s aunt and uncle, my YaYa and PapPap. About a third of my summers have been spent with them in some way, and the first Christmas I can remember celebrating away from home was at their house.

The first big adventure I spent with them happened after that Christmas but long before now. It was the summer of 2015, right before the start of my freshman year of high school. I don’t remember why, but my dad decided we (he, my younger brother, Matthew, and I) should all drive up to Alaska from Boise, Idaho, and that we should go with YaYa and PapPap. A complete summer adventure, from the day after my middle school graduation until the first day of high school.

YaYa and PapPap had an RV, one that still works as well today as it did back then. There are the driver and passenger seats in the front, beneath what can be used as a bed; right behind the driver is a couch with two seatbelts; a swivel chair sits across from that and next to the door; and just past the door is a booth table with two seatbelts per booth. There’s also the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, but those aren’t important right now. What is important is the fact that my brother and I always fought over who got the swivel chair until about half-way to Alaska.

We rock-paper-scissored to decide who would get it the first day, and from there we switched daily. My dad came up with the solution. A few days into our trip, though, and I began to believe that either the swivel chair was over-hyped, or I just really got the short end of the stick. Eventually, I ended up just letting my brother have the swivel chair while I took the couch.

Somewhere in the middle of Canada, my boredom got the best of me, and that couch was the most comfortable place to sleep while in a moving vehicle. Why was I bored, though? Because I felt as though I had absolutely nothing to do! I did not have a smartphone at the time (and even if I had, my parents would not have wanted to pay international data and messaging fees), I did not take my hot pink Nintendo DSi with me, and I don’t think I had my iPod Nano at the time either. Reading in such a shaky vehicle made me feel sick to my stomach, and writing was out of the question. Talking to my family made me way too anxious, too; my brother was four years younger than me, so I didn’t really know what to talk with him about anymore, and my dad kept trying to bring up high school which was terrifying. YaYa and PapPap, while not strangers, still lived all the way in New Jersey, so I didn’t know how to talk to them, either.  So for weeks on end, while we drove, I would just sleep.

If we had played music in the RV, I do believe I would have been more inclined to stay awake, but YaYa hated listening to music when she drove. At one point on our drive back, I convinced her to play music, but she was so passive-aggressively angry the whole time that when she shut it off and never turned it back on again, I didn’t say anything and just continued to sleep.

Still, I’d wake up when we hit a neat attraction. There was a “garden” of metal creatures made from old bike chains, gears, pipes, and wires that was really cool. The garden included several species of dinosaurs (like the T-Rex, a pterodactyl, and a stegosaurus), cartoon characters (Snoopy, Thomas the Tank Engine), and a lot of giant insects (dragonflies, ants, butterflies). There were spiders, too, which were scary to see, since they were taller than my six-foot-tall dad, and I was only four-and-a-half-feet-tall at the time.

Another cool place was an almost-maze of signs. There were street signs, “Welcome to Insert State Here” signs, “Insert City Name Here” signs, population signs, and even license plates! My brother and I raced through the place, trying to find either our names or the funniest signs possible. There wasn’t a “Matthew” for my brother, but I did find a “Douglas” ― my dad’s name ― and my brother and I insisted we take a picture of him with it to send to our mom. Matthew ended up finding an “Alexandria” for me, which I still have very mixed feelings about; I hated being called my full name then, and I especially hate it now, so looking back on that memory feels weird.

I slept a lot less in Alaska, probably because we were actually going out every day to see attractions. My mom flew in to meet us there; as the primary breadwinner of the family, she couldn’t afford to miss a lot of work, but she still wanted to be with us. We ate a lot of fish up there, and we could still find snow even though it was July! We even saw a glacier at one point. I was finally awake to see a ton of wildlife as well, from caribou to bears to a moose.

On the way back, though, I surrendered to the couch again. I remember going to bed around eight o’clock one night then not waking up until a little after noon, just in time for lunch. My brother informed me that I missed seeing a giant metal mosquito, which made me glad that I slept for so long. I’d already suffered enough at the hands of giant metal insects and arachnids.

I’m a quiet person normally, but during that drive back I talked as little as possible. I think I was overwhelmed by how much had happened in such a short amount of time. Usually, I’d just retreat to my room for a few hours of solitude before returning to my family, but it was physically impossible to be completely alone in a single RV carrying five whole people. To make matters worse, my family kept trying to pull me into active conversations when all I wanted was to rest my overstimulated mind. Had I been aware of my own autism at the time, I think I could’ve de-stressed a lot easier and faster, and maybe my family would’ve been more perceptive to my needs. As it stood, what started out as an okay-to-great vacation was rapidly becoming one of heightened depression and anxiety. Background music that requires no interaction often helped, which was why I begged YaYa to turn on the radio for even five minutes.

The suffering came to an end, though, as all things do, when we finally made it back home. There was still a week before school started, and I definitely spent that entire week holed up in my room, trying to restabilize my mind. However, even though the latter half of our vacation had been way more stressful than it should have been, I found myself missing that old RV. I missed YaYa and PapPap, too.

And I found that I actually enjoyed the trip.