Remember being a teen, wanting more than anything to spend the summer hanging out with friends? Days spent leisurely soaking up the sun on the beach and cruising around late at night, talking about all the wild adventures you wanted to go on.
Inevitably, your parents interfered, dragging you away from all of those glorious plans in order to spend ‘quality family time’ on a vacation that felt more like torture than relaxation.
What it really meant was no personal space, traitorous siblings ready to tattle at any moment, and the bad luck of being the only one from your friend group who missed out on all the summer memories being made.
Oh to be young and full of angst.
One young teen, in particular, this summer has felt the keen sting of the family vacation more than most. 911 received a call from an Ontario teenager, claiming her parents had ‘forced’ her to go on vacation. The 15-year-old was at a rental cottage in Trent Hills near Belleville and when a police officer came by to check on her, she buried her face in her hands and said she really didn’t want to be there.
Her mom had no idea she’d called the police and the teen was given a warning by the officer not to misuse the emergency line since resources could be going to situations that help maintain the safety of others. The officer left any further discipline to the mother.
While we completely understand the misery of family vacations at that age, calling it in as an emergency may have been a slight exaggeration—although imagining another round of charades with the family gives us shudders too…
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