LIFE IS A HIGHWAY
Fresh off a post about purging, I noticed a booster seat in the neighbour’s garbage today. There are certain milestones along the parenting journey where you slam the door to a stage shut with great joy.[1] Getting through the car seat phase ranks high on this list.
This is especially true if you, like us, have three kids in car seats at once and, like us, vainly refuse to get a minivan. [2] You can’t fit 3 car seats in any vehicle remotely resembling the cool car you bought before kids (RIP Black OG Saab). Getting each kid into their rollercoaster-grade strap system requires much bodily maneuvering (both yours and theirs). Particularly when you have one of those kids who protest their car seat by playing 'stiff as a board’ - arms glued to sides, torso rigid like a tin soldier - making it impossible buckle them in.[3] Then, doing up the seat belt requires cramming your hand into the tight abyss of the buckle hole, where any manner of kid residue dwells. Best case you get fish cracker crumbs under your fingernails, but there is always the chance you will locate whatever is making that alarming, dairy-based smell.[4]
Having three across also means that there is no buffer between bored and easily riled children. I suspect there is no age, or car, that can successfully accommodate this seating arrangement. It’s like flying in a middle seat in economy - but without the psychologically critical 2-inch arm rest to define your personal space. As the youngest, I always sat in the middle seat, between my two brothers. The middle seat had many draw backs. Despite the girth of our big green Buick, the middle seat was a foot wide hump that did double duty as an arm rest and was like sitting abreast a camel. Meanwhile my brothers’ seats were like mobile lazy boy chairs. My spot had the additional drawback of the drive train, which meant that your knees were hiked up to head level and had to be shared with our dog’s oversized and remarkably heavy head. You couldn’t sleep without doing the fly catcher-head bob combo and getting shoved back and forth like being the ball in a game of pong.
And then there was the poking. In my memory, just breathing resulted in a poke in the ribs. My one brother would point his index finger at me like a gun at the very edge of my space so that if I moved a millimetre, it would jab me (but ’technically’ he wouldn't have poked me). This would kick start a sequence of events that marked every car ride:
1) poke (brother)
2) wail (me)
3) SMACK! (driver)
The smack was my Dad’s hand flying in a sweeping arc through the gap between the two front seats. In one of the great injustices of my young (and clearly privileged) life, the Smack-Arc invariably landed on me. It was never clear who he was looking to get. It didn’t matter so long as the two of us stopped whining/making me whine. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next recourse was to move me (always me) to the jump seat in the front. This was the absolute worst. Not only was it even more space constrained, but it was also inside the tense psychological bubble of my now completely irritated parents.[5]
There was never any choice about where I sat because I got car sick in any other seat. I needed to keep my eyes on the horizon like I was in a boat (which is how the Buick felt). Even then it was a high-risk scenario. Just catching a glimpse of a map or the page of a book was enough to tip the barf-balance. Stopping was out of the question (why?). Instead, my father would collect airplane bags every time he flew so that we had a standing supply on hand. If the motion wasn’t enough to make you sick, the weird smell of the inside of one of those barf bags was sure to do the trick.
This was back in the day when “Window TV” and license plate games were the only forms of car entertainment. Both of which I had to shield my eyes from using my hands like makeshift horse blinders. We only drove to a handful of places as a family, but the trip would always involve cottage roads. Cottage roads are a special breed of dirt road with lots of twists and stomach-dropping hills. The perfect combo for motion sick kids (and dogs, as it turned out). My grandfather, father, and now M took/take great joy in catching air on cottage road hills. I continue to have to point out that it won't be so funny when I upchuck all over them. Apparently, it’s worth the risk?
None of these childhood experiences led to much empathy when the roles were reversed, and I was on the parent side of the equation. To be fair, we often drove long distances with the girls, and they were remarkably well behaved. At least until they weren’t. No matter how long we were in the car, things would start to dissolve during the last half hour of any trip. S would hit her limit and become extraordinarily hyper. Picture the Tasmanian devil - but trapped in a car seat. Once the control valve has failed, there was really no hope. The only cure was for it to go TOO FAR. Like the time she threw a (full) water bottle and hit M on the back of the head.
Instantaneous Deathly Silence.
Everyone in the car was immediately fully aware that the line had been crossed. Like prey sensing predator, the children froze, their wide eyes, trained on their father. If it had been me, there would have been a 2000s version of the SMACK, curtailed more by my short T-rex arms than any sliver of patience or parental correctness. M, to his great credit, pulled (okay, screeched) the car to the side of the road, got out and paced until he was no longer consumed by thoughts of infanticide, or at least roadside abandonment. It only takes a few of these instances to smarten them up for life.
The car seat phase, and then the Taz/T-rex phase, end just in time for the Carpool Era to begin. Carpooling was its own “are we there yet?” experience. Except it was me asking the question. Carefully crafted carpools were critical. The ultimate example of the “it takes a village” approach to parenting, but modelled after super elite clubs where each member is admitted based on specific criteria: MIT graduate level ability to interpret a complex matrix schedules; willingness to engage in extreme familial co-dependency; tolerance for outsider parenting; an understanding that your family affairs will disseminated; and acceptance of the fact that the children will (in my case) be exposed to some Duo Lingo Fr@*!ch lessons.
One can never find fault in the carpool structure least the house of cards upon which your sanity lies falls apart. Even with carpools in place, you will be spending approximately 168 hours in a week (wait, how many hours are there in a week??) NOT-idling in parking lots; trapped in traffic on the way to “home” turf/ice/tracks that are inexplicably nowhere near school; and driving hours out of town for a game/practice that lasts 45 minutes. The kids would play games like 'Red Car Tally' or ‘You Must Marry’.[6] I meanwhile would be playing 'Where in the world could I be in the amount of time I have spent driving kids around today?’. The answer was invariably vastly superior to wherever I was playing solitaire on my phone outside of a sports dome.
Most of our friends are through all these kid chauffeuring phases. To those that aren’t, remember: this too shall pass, and you will soon be putting the actual or metaphorical car seat out on the curb.
Just in time for the teen driving phase (see: Young Drivers of Karma).
As always, be careful what you wish for.
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[1] Marie Kundo should do a spin off show focused on the things that bring you joy to put into the trash, versus joy to keep.
[2] I still don't know if he was just messing with me, but M tried to convince me that the Carnivale minivan (branded as "lifestyle utility vehicle” – nice try) was the ideal empty nest vehicle for us. Just goes to show that even after 30+ years there is still room in a relationship to test the boundaries.
[3] This battle of wills can only be won if your child is ticklish since it is impossible to both stay stiff and squirm.
[4] Dating myself (and outing myself as a geek), this always reminded me of Flash Gordon and the Deadly Ritual where he had to put his hand into the holes of the Wood Beast's lair.
[5] My elder brother meanwhile was safely ensconced behind the driver’s seat, with his back to the melee - presumably, and justifiably, pretending his siblings didn't exist.
[6] In this game you must marry the driver of the car coming alongside you. You get three vetoes. Use them wisely.