Driving in the Car With Minions

When I was brainstorming this week, I said to hubby that I needed to write an entry about driving. He agreed, but believed that the trauma/drama of driving with children is worthy of at least two, if not more rants, so I will narrow my topic.(Side note: our van can contain 15 passengers, not because we anticipated ever transporting 13 people, but because then when we loaded our cantankerous minions in the car, they don't TOUCH each other in their assigned seating. Hubby notes that it was this vehicular option or handcuffs and belly chains like the state penitentiary.)

I live in a geographic region with a meteorological identity crisis. I guess I should preface that this region is not my native climate, I yield from a temperate city in the Northwestern part of the country. I grew up close enough to the ocean to walk to the beach; the weather has a permeating and comfortable dankness that imparts the slight musk of mildew and ensures a generalized follicle dampness that prevents curling (this was a bane for me as a child.) With that aside, I am agog at the fact that I have put down roots in a place where I swelter in the summer and shiver all winter. In fact, this area seems to completely forget the fact that there is a spring or fall altogether. My husband chides that I am comfortable for 15 minutes out of the ENTIRE year.

Nearly two months ago, Mother Nature had one of her common mood swings. It is not at all unheard of to use the furnace for a comfortable breakfast and have to switch to air conditioning by lunchtime. On my way back from my tri-weekly trek to ballet class, our van (often thought to be able to be seen from space) hit a patch of black ice and began pirouhetting across oncoming freeway traffic. My entire life flashed before my eyes, it was brief and gratefully so, because it was extremely dry viewing. Our guardian angels must have watched us that evening because there was enough delay in the onset of traffic that we were unscathed and the van finished her graceful rotations facing forward so we could continue along our way, creeping tearfully and shaking at 30 mph, but none the worse for wear.

Since that day, with the slightest sign of precipitation, I retreat to my little hole and hibernate until the storm front passes. So yesterday, when it began vomiting snow from the sky in obscene amounts, I proclaimed ballet a lost cause and began hunkering down till the undesirable weather passed. As I began preparing hot chocolate, I came to the shocking realization that my husband had rode his motorcycle to work that morning and I was going to have to put on my big girl panties and brave the weather-induced stupidity if I was going to avoid being a widow.

I quickly bundled the children and left with a half hour to spare for my seven-mile journey through this frozen hell that invaded my otherwise quiet suburban wonderland. Something about the added tension wafting in the air when a parent is confronted with inclimate weather and the looming threat of vehicular demise, brings out the insanity in young children. After my fourth tire-spinning, fish-tailing, swear-word inducing episode, my middle two sons (who are usually the best of pals, but occasionally the worst of enemies) decided that this moment was the time to air ALL dirty laundry of the past two weeks.

“You ate the last cookie on Monday!”

“Your breath stinks when he give me good night kisses!”

“Maaaww-om, Grouchy Minion says that my breath stinks. (In that sing-songing, lilting whine reserved for only the most trivial of tattling.) That is okay, Grouchy, because I wouldn't want to kiss a POOPHEAD anyway.”

“Maaaw-om, he called me a poophead!”

And then the wrestling match ensued. From my white-knuckled, ulcer-inducing, buttocks-clenching seat three rows up (I told you, it was a gigantic van), I see a pair of Lightning McQueen tennis shoes leap over the seat. It was like watching a throwback to Tom and Jerry cartoons of my youth. A non-specific sphere of limbs with an occasional head peeking out to breathe, and all this with a muffled soundtrack of blows landing and ending abruptly with the ear-piercing wail of defeat and injury. (In writing this post, I have found out that cartoon critics have coined the phrase “Ball of Violence” for this phenomenon. This moniker begs to be integrated into daily speech.) “Maaaaw-om, he hit me! Come back here and make him stop!” Huh? Why do children think that cars drive themselves?

“Maaaaw-om, did you see what he did?” I want to reply with, “Oh darn, I missed it! I was mistakenly paying attention to the life-threatening driving conditions and the strenuous responsibility of keeping you little demons, miraculously born without the desire for self-preservation, ALIVE!” Instead I settle for the self-editing feature that miraculously appeared after having my second child. It usually starts with the first consonant sound of the curse word that is threatening to escape my lips and ends with something much more pre-meditated and constructive. “What the He...aave you made sure that your seat belts are fastened? Sh---ouldn't we all just remember to forgive and forget, you bunch of braaaa...angels.” (My eldest minion, in listening to my post for editing and suggestions, declares that he has rarely heard quotes like these. Apparently, usually I just say the curse word.)

I am always amazed at the timing of the aggressive scuffles in my car. I swear that my children wait until the road has less traction than a sheet of glass, or when the freeway is an unpredictable parking lot of irate and indecisive drivers, or when the car starts making those odd whining sounds again, or when the baby has continued his two-hour serenade of terror and my right eye feels like it is about to explode from the socket just to escape the unceasing and shrill screaming.

I was discussing mommy survival skills with another friend who has six little minions of her own. I was narrating the instance when my mother (admittedly an empty-nesting mother of two), and her tension while riding in my car. Mom questioned how I keep my sanity through repeated journeys to different classes and obligations when I have a constant soundtrack of bickering and the siren song of my youngest minion. The answer is a very finely tuned filtration system. This filtration system, through years of honed apathy, is able to decipher the screams of pain (which require attention) from the screeches of irritation (which require inaction.) Example: “Mom, he keeps touching my armrest!”= completely unheard by the trained and filtering mommy ear. “Mom, cool! I can watch my tendons move through this cut in my foot!” (an actual quote uttered by one of my minions while in the throws of seeking medical treatment)=alert, listening, doing triage and en route to the ER.