Holiday Travel: The Highway To Hell

The only thing worse than traveling by car on a holiday weekend?  Traveling by car on a holiday weekend with a couple of kids.  The very idea of hurtling down the road at 70 mph for 3+ hours in a metal capsule smaller than most elevators is enough to strike fear into the hearts of parents and children, alike.  Worse?  Once the destination has been reached so has the point of no return.  Unless you intend to leave your car at the inlaws house and travel by train or plane, you have three more  hours of torture ahead of you just to get home (at which point said children will have accumulated five bags of laundry, a voracious appetite and melted every single crayon in the box into your automobile's interior, making for more work).

What's the problem with today's children?  When I was a kid, we played License Plate I-Spy, read a book or slept (in between teasing one another and whining about the need for a bathroom and terminal boredom).  In theory, my kids have virtually nothing to complain about (so long as they use the potty before we leave the house).  For our recent holiday road trip I packed the interior of the car with enough garbage to keep them entertained for three weeks, not just the three measly hours to Grandma's house.  Included in the loot were the following:

1.  Nintendo DS and corresponding games
2.  One Leapster (also with corresponding games)
3.  One iPod (loaded with every Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift song my dear husband could find on iTunes)
4.  Mommy's iTouch (yeah, like I let the little varmints use it...I'm still hooked on Bejeweled Blitz, darnit)
5.  One DVD player with two sets of headphones
6.  Movies:  Spongebob Squarepants, High School Musical I, II and III, Ratatoullie, Robots...and a couple of others I've spaced on.
7.  Two barbies and corresponding hairbrushes and ensembles
8.  Ten year old's library book
9.  Four year old's Doodle Magic Magnetic Writer
10.  One twenty pound living and breathing mutt to cuddle with
11.  Ten year old's pink laptop (alas, no WiFi available on Interstate 5 so essentially useless)

Despite our toy store on wheels, after twenty minutes of driving the complaints began.  "She's touching me."  "Mom, make her stop touching me."  "She won't let me play Barbies with her."  "My headphones won't work."  "Why do we have to watch this?"  "Tell her to stop breathing on me."  "Hello?  Mom, PLEASE tell her to stop breathing on me." And let us not forget the famous last words of every child's traveling arsenal, "Are we there, YET?"

After an hour I wanted to jump out my skin and scream, "No, we are not there, yet, and if you ask again your Nintendo DS will spend Thanksgiving on the side of I-5 because I'm going to toss it out a window if I hear another word."  My husband will studiously ignore the bickering and complaints as long as possible, but I can guage his irritation level like I'm reading a thermometer.  His neck will turn pink.  Then his ears will turn pink.  Finally, at the point that his face is flushing the color of a tomato and I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to stroke out, he'll explode.

"Do I need to turn this car around?!"  He'll holler.  "If I  have to pull this car over, you'll both be grounded!"
I'm suddenly transported back to the early 1980s,  and am having flashbacks of my mother's hand waving wildly between the seats, attempting to blindly strike whichever kid happened to be acting like the proverbial horse's rear, all while simultaneously keeping up with the flow of traffic.  Amazing, isn't it?  That any of us reached adulthood without perishing in a spanking-related accident is the stuff of miracles. (Not to mention we didn't have airbags.)

Bottom line:  While you worry that someday you'll turn into your mother, in actuality, you should be more worried that you have given birth to an exact replica of yourself and your bratty siblings.  The fact is, karma really is a b*&%...and there isn't a movie or video game on the planet that will change that fact.  The good news?  Just wait until they grow up and have kids of their own....

Happy Thanksgiving.