The boys and I always do a camping trip on the just before school starts. This year, as we were discussing just where our adventure should take us, I discovered that the oldest had a different plan.

“The Fun Spot,” he said. “Let’s go there.”

For those of you who don’t know Florida, the Fun Spot is basically a permanent carnival type thing, with go-carts, bumper boats, a ferris wheel and  so on. Not the sort of end of summer adventure I was hoping for. “No,” I said. “Let’s stick to camping.”

“But maybe we could camp next to it,” he said. “You know. There must be a field or something.”

“I don’t think so. People get kind of upset when you do that.”

“Maybe it’s on the way to our camp site.”

“Why do you want to go to the Fun Spot, anyway?” I asked. “You’ve never been there.”

“Cause it’s fun,” he said, “and it’s, um, a spot.”

His brother and I started laughing.

“It looks really fun on the commercials,” he said. “Besides, they couldn’t call it the Fun Spot if it wasn’t a fun spot.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but it could be a fun spot surrounded by acres of sadness. One little shining bit of joy in a wilderness of desperate depression.”

The two boys looked at each other, then at me, then burst out laughing. “Da-ad,” my oldest said. “Come on! You know it’s not like that.”