Jun. 30, 2005 – Originally published by CNC, Inc.

Here's One For The Road: Taking The Kids On Vacation

I am getting ready to drive down to Maryland this week, and I’ll have two of my three boys with me, and one of the boys is only five years old. “Deirdre, did you kill too many brain cells blowing up the inflatable pool?” you might ask, and indeed, you may be right. And you’ll really fall over when you hear this:I do not have a DVD or VHS player in my car to help whittle away the long highway hours. That’s right — we’re going on an old-fashioned road trip — lots of tears, screaming, and good ol’ suffering — because that’s the family way.

Now, when I was growing up things were different.Parents actually dealt with their kids. They made up games, for example — “Who can spot a red car?” This game lasted for only thirty seconds when you were older than five, until your parents got crafty and started coming up with colors like magenta, and puce. Also, parents threatened you a lot on the highway, and said a famous phrase that is as old and as important as our dear Constitution: “If you two don’t cut it out, I am going to pull this car over RIGHT NOW, and then you’ll be sorry.” It is clear that the parent didn’t really understand the first thing about kids by saying this, because if there’s one thing a bored kid wants, it’s a change from the boredom. This can be anything — a sudden engine fire, a cow suffering from spontaneous combustion on the side of the road, and certainly pulling the car over would qualify as a change. In fact, it gets the child closer to the main goal of being released from the car, so hence, the last thing the kid thinks he’ll be is sorry. The parent loses that battle before they’re even out of the gate.

Parents also believed in one thing as a successful ingredient for a car trip: the cheese Nab cracker pack. A parent was known to target rest stops that were in states not even involved in the travel route if there was the promise of a vending machine that carried cheese Nabs. They did work a strange kind of magic — in fact, were the Nabs people in cahoots with parents back then? Was there a powerful drug emitted when that crinkly cellophane wrapper was broken that lulled children into blissful, chewing compliance? All I know is that for generations all over this great country sleepy grandchildren were presented to blissful grandparents with stomach aches and millions of orange crumbs all over them, and out in the driveway the family Ford Fairlane (ours was “Mannix” black) was covered with orange crumbs and empty cellophane. That era ended with the invention of the juice box and the rest-stop Burger King.

Another thing that parents used to force on kids during long car trips was the “travel-size game.” Now this was the tiny, shrunken version of actual games — kids would be losing tiny Chinese checkers marbles in the car seats, or struggling to make a spirograph picture with plastic wheels the size of dimes. “Battleship” was particularly challenging in miniature — the battleships kept getting lost, and soon the tiny cases were being used to hurt your siblings.Your mother would be trying to re-fold the roadmap while screaming, “I haven’t heard any battle coordinates in awhile!Don’t make us pull over!” These tiny games also induced nausea, which is why the only one we played was Twister.

Another important difference between the modern road trip and the road trips of yesteryear: no seatbelts, really. Oh, sure, they were there, but they were wedged so far into the back seat that your mom and dad didn’t even try — they just told you to “be careful back there.” (Like you were driving!) So, mobility was not limited — you could lunge over to punch your brother, tumble into the front seat to snuggle with mom, or hang your arms around your dad’s neck while he told you how great this trip was going to be, and by how many laps he was going to beat you in the race at the motel’s swimming pool.

So, my road trip will be more like those childhood trips — the fighting, the crying, the bargaining, the threats. But I still wouldn’t want to lose my kids to a DVD player — and learning to endure for long periods of time is a critical skill to learn — they too will be taxpayers some day.I’m sure some fun will be mixed in. Now I just need to know — where do they sell Nabs around here?