Road show

When I was little, I remember my dad packing up our station wagon and leaving a nice little cubby area back in the back.
That was my spot, and I would be the last one in, complete with an activities kit my mom had prepared for me. I would climb in, and my dad would shut the tailgate, reminding me how AWESOME it must be to have my OWN room in the car!!!
It took me well into my adult years to realize that I was, in fact, being put in solitary confinement. This was for my own protection, as my three older sisters in the front may very well have considered ejecting me somewhere along an Alabama highway.
Since that time, we as a society have realized that stowing children as luggage is not the best mode of transport. (Other modes now deemed a poor choice: Stashed up on the back window ledge; curled on the floor board, using the seat as your pillow; on the hood.)
Fortunately, though, car comforts have come a long way, so when you do have to strap your children into their car seats for the duration of a long trip, you don’t feel like you’re depriving them of the joy that is having a suitcase cave in the back of a station wagon.
The main way that travel has become more comfortable for kids is through TVs. I know there are some of you out there who would NEVER put a TV in the car with your child.
After all, you never had one, right? These kids today, right? I was once one of you. I told my wife we would NEVER have a TV in the car.
They can read a book or play the license plate game or count cows or whatever it is we did back last century. And they’ll like it!
And then I left Destin, Fla., one cool winter morn, a 9-month-old in the car.
She began to scream, oh, about the time we put her in the car. She did not stop. She did not pause. She screamed.
And it was so loud, my wife and I could barely discuss what to do.
My wife considered climbing into the back seat to feed her. We opted to pull off at a rest stop to feed her.
If driving made her mad, stopping made her madder. We somehow endured the rest of the eight-hour trip. If memory serves, she fell asleep about 10 minutes from our driveway.
The next time we traveled, we went out and bought a small TV. We put it on the middle console of the car and strapped it down with bungee cords.
Allie, sensing we were about to travel somewhere, immediately began to wail. And then, I hit play and – ELMO!!! Good-bye, tears, hello Elmo on constant loop for the next eight hours.
From that point on, we never traveled long distances without our trusty TV/VCR combo.
We eventually upgraded to a smaller one, and now have one that’s factory-installed in our van. We have a few strict rules on the player:
1. Movies only go on for trips longer than one hour. This would be far easier to stick to if someone would stop putting movies on for trips to the grocery store. It would also help if certain people would stop ratting out that someone to Mommy.
2. We do not fight over the movie. Allie picks, then Parker picks. If there is a fight, they are forced to watch Pauly Shore’s “Son-in-Law.”
3. The driver is not allowed to try and watch the movie, even at stoplights. This rule was challenged, but was overruled on a 1-1 vote of the Household Supreme Court.
4. If one child falls asleep during his movie pick, you CAN switch over to “Cheetah Girls 2” but you have to switch back as soon as first child wakes up, even if he insists on watching “Cheetah Girls 2,” as he does not need to watch “Cheetah Girls 2.” If necessary, we’ll put on “Die Hard” or “Terminator” or a replay of game 6 of the 1995 World Series, but he’s not watching “Cheetah Girls 2” and that’s final.
Again, I am sure there are plenty of you old schoolers out there who find it abhorrent that parents use DVDs to hypnotize their children during trips.
But do remember that it is not just pacifying the children. There are perks for the grown-ups, too. For example, although I have never seen the movie “Cars,” I have listened to it about 4,000 times. You couldn’t get that kind of thrill back in 1978!
The fact of the matter is that, as parents, you do what works for you. And for us, a DVD player works quite well. Even if we’re just going to the grocery store.