Attention, parents: Have you noticed extra family members underfoot recently? An increase of cookie crumbs on the carpet? Privacy in the bathroom cut to an average 7.5 seconds per visit?
Yep – school’s out for the summer, which means just one thing: the annual family vacation countdown is underway. The destination has been determined, vacation clothes purchased, pressed and packed away, and everybody’s ready for some big fun in the sun.
Of course this means that everyone must actually take a trip to reach said destination, and this is where it gets dicey as families are forced to share the same confining bit of airspace when hitting the open road each summer. I believe if human beings were meant to trek about in cramped quarters, we’d have all stayed in the womb until around our 12th birthday.
Obviously, not everyone travels on four wheels to their destination. Some people recklessly take their family foibles into the open arena by boarding airplanes and other means of public transportation. But a road trip with the kids is as American as apple pie, and most parents eventually seek a vehicle to accommodate the family unit as it mobilizes for vacation.
Space is key, and back in the olden days when I was young, the behemoth station wagon was the way to go. The best kind had a back seat that folded down, giving kids a play platform that seemed as broad as an aircraft carrier when you backed out of your driveway. Ten miles later the situation had drastically changed, and bloody brawls ensued from the rear. Of course this was before seat belts were mandatory. Kids rolled and bobbled about freely, whacking their siblings at will, until dad threatened (for the 50th time) to stop the car and give everyone a “good spanking” – whatever that was – and “turn this car around and go straight home,” scrapping our long-awaited adventure at Camp Minitutu, Dinosaur World or wherever the final thrilling destination happened to be that year.
Station wagons eventually gave way to even bigger van “conversions.” These juggernauts came equipped with all sorts of wondrous additions. Our family’s van had a refrigerator, CB radio and a movable table in the rear. These vehicles didn’t maneuver too well, let alone corner gracefully, so it was not uncommon that I’d be traversing the wide aisle like a perky flight attendant, dispensing cold drinks and snacks to my spouse and young daughters, when suddenly the thing would swerve wildly and there I’d be with one foot in the bean dip, holding for dear life to a nearby seat back.
With all that room, you’d think the kids would have been happy to remain in the rear of the vehicle, but nooooooo. At each fueling stop, they’d clamber to the front to negotiate new seating arrangements, plead for crucial dietary necessities like frozen fudge bars or (during one particularly harrowing experience) fiddle with the CB radio.
“Mayday! Mayday!” our 3-year old daughter hollered into the open microphone at one such stop. Grabbing the instrument from her, I offered a sheepish apology to the world at large, concluding with a feeble “never mind,” before banishing her to the shadowy recesses of the backseat where she was met with loud guffaws from her older sister for “getting into trouble with mom.”
The only rule for kids when packing for a trip in the van was to talk your mother into letting you bring every toy that had ever crossed your path. Headless Barbies were suddenly deemed too precious to leave behind, and we’d drag along bushel loads of sundry toys that had been ignored for months and that continued to be ignored for the duration of the trip.
But there were plenty of tender moments like when our two young daughters envisioned the van’s movable table a dance floor where they guided their Ken dolls in a starry-eyed couple’s waltz to the romantic tune playing on the radio. Apparently, the Barbies’ heads were still MIA or they were suffering other fashion disasters since they were nowhere in sight.
Whatever my curious queries to the girls might have been regarding the untraditional dancing partners, I kept them to myself. It was the quietest they’d been all day.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at [email protected].
