Bickering
Okay. Last hotel room before we’re home. I told Beta Male I needed a quick something for this post and let him get a bit wild on the bed. He suddenly found energy he didn’t possess one minute earlier when I told him to get ready for bed.
Big shock coming here: driving halfway across America with your wife and three kids is about as conducive to working as using the time between the contractions to wallpaper the front hallway.
I thought we’d fair a bit better this go-around, seeing as how each of the little cyborgs was hooked up, dialed in, and zoned out on separate electronic entertainment devices. I even got a splitter allowing two sets of headphones to enjoy the dulcet tones of whatever freak Hannah MonJonah crap it is they had better make sure I don’t have to hear. Nevertheless, their laser-guided Who Has More honing devices were pop-sizzling at the ready should any one of them happen to have one molecule more brain-melting experience than the other, in which case they lost their minds and basically started whining loudly enough to make me kick myself for not leaving them at the gas station fifty miles back when I had the chance.
At least I was lent a fine pair of noise-cancelling headphones by my friend, Kendall, who seemed to anticipate the likelihood that this vehicle would hold all the promise for peace and quiet as that front hallway I mentioned above.
There are so many things about road trips I hate…and let me be clear hear about what I mean and what I don’t mean by hate:
What I mean: I hate road trips.
What I don’t mean: I sort of hate road trips.
I really have no category for the folks who idealize these things into family sing-alongs and scrap-booking little cutout shapes for whatever part of their brain they siphon off delusions of Little House on the Prairie, but these things are hell.
For one thing, I can’t drive the whole way. I wish I could, but I can’t. Now, this is going to come off a bit on the…well, mean side. But I more intend the humor to come through. And as my friend HeatherAnne and her compatriots over at The Collective have so perfectly articulated, “Mean and funny is still funny.”
That said, let’s see how much of the passing Total Nothing Passing Outside My Window we can wipe from memory with a list of Three Things I’m Not Enjoying:
#1: Their bickering. It is not fighting. It is not arguing. It is not even bothering each other. It’s bickering. And it’s bickering because that is precisely the word my mom and dad used when they (and I swear to God they did this) reached back from the front seat of the station wagon (yes, wood-paneled…let’s just get that out of the way), and beat the living hell out of all five of us with a red yardstick. Which we all knew as Big Red. That’s what we got when we tipped the scale of their fading sanity with our bickering. Now, I would never recruit a three foot red yard stick to hit my children with when they were engaged in too much bickering. Because I forgot to pack it. But the biggest pain in the backside that this bickering fosters is it means enlisting Cute Redhead or myself to referee the latest bicker. Which means I have to take off the relationship preserving noise-cancelling headphones. And that Displeases me.
#2: Her driving. Okay, this might not earn me a lot of points with the ladies but I’m not going to surprise anybody by saying it anyway. I think men are way better drivers. I know you have the uteri, the whole Mothering thing, hell you (probably shouldn’t have just said ‘hell’) have the whole Mother of God thing on your sides. You can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never ever ever let me forget I’m a man yada yada yada. I get it. You have all kinds of things on your side, but I’m pretty much certain one of those things cluttering up your corners is not Drives Well. We are on a straight away between Wichita Falls and Amarillo right now. I want you to close your eyes, lay your head back, divest yourself of all distractions and worries, and imagine Utter Nothingness. Straight. Utter. Bleak. Nothingness. That’s what we’re on right now. Now…all men, right now, instinctively just twitched one of their fingers and very subtly moved their right foot. And here’s why: in our minds, that sort of straight-away means CRUISE! CONTROL! Which means, pick a speed and STAY. WITH. IT. Better yet, let the SUV do it for you. And the twitch of our finger was us clicking on cruise control, and our right foot moving was our taking our foot off the gas and letting the machinery do its thing. No stopping. No starting. No stopping starting stopping starting stopping starting stopping merge starting no-wait-merge-back starting stopping shoot me. And in this way we can use all the available time (that’d be the time I’m not leaning out the passenger window hurling) talking about all the Utter Nothing we’re driving through. And in the same way I know all the guys RIGHT NOW agree with me, I also know NONE OF THEM are going to admit it and take one step back leaving my butt on the firing line. Not my first rodeo.
#3: The accommodations. I don’t mean the quality. I don’t mean the company. I mean the size. As in spatially. Now, this is the 21st century, right? And I know it’s the case in many cultures around the world, but you can drop the whole National Geographic whatever-your-point-is right now, because I do NOT live and sleep right on top of every single member of my family. I mean, think about this: when you’re home you have different rooms and different things to do. But when you’re in a hotel room or guesting at someone’s home, you’re more or less throwing all your luggage and the kids and each other into a 20 x 20 dog crate and wondering why, no less than eight hours into it, you realize you carved out a little time to stop the merriment and settle in with the rest of the clan to watch The Shining. And it relaxes you. That’s always a good sign that your nerves are sort of fraying at the ends.
Okay, that’s three. I could write a bit more but, to be honest, it’d be a bit on the disingenuous side because I’m just blowing off a little steam, folks. Nothing to see here. Show’s over. Move along.
And I was totally kidding about the men being better drivers, ladies. Honest.
I’m actually laughing more than I’m bickering. That is, when I’m not hurling out the passenger window.
This is great, I am so going to send this to my wife and blame you. Not that I think SHE is a bad driver who doesnt understand cruise control or look farther down the road then 50 feet, but to let her know what OTHER husbands MIGHT think, not that I would.
Certainly. Not that you would. Or me. It’s not us, it’s others. You go tell her. (I’ll wait here.)
This is what I say to my husband about crusie control. Why do they call it control? There is no control when your foot is not on the peddal. After he gets done throwing up out the window, he takes over the driving.
Regarding the kids, seriously, why do people have more than one? The Bible says go forth be fuitful and multiply. It does not say do it over and over. That is why I have one kid.
I am just sayin.
It’s CONTROL because WE have it when we’re driving. It’s in The Rules. And on the fruitful thing? They’re darn lucky it doesn’t say “go forth and homicide.” I am just sayin.