Like all good family summer vacations, ours involved many long hours of driving. Nothing brings the family together like a little intense time in the old minivan. We anticipated that the boys might get tired of the riding so we had a few strategies in mind to help them out. When I say we, I of course mean my wife. She had picked up a new DVD and borrowed some audio books from the library. She also brought along a fine cross-section of our music CDs. Typically, the boys use headphones when they watch a movie. This frees us to talk or listen to music without too much disruption. Of course, if the boys do need something they usually forget to remove their headphones. Instead, they shout their request/complaint and then can't hear our response unless we shout back. So, during movie time our van was mostly quiet with occasional outbursts of shouting.
As I mentioned, I had little involvement in procuring items for amusement and distraction. My responsibilities fell to the technical side. I hooked up the portable DVD player and made sure both sets of headphones were working and properly connected. Our van does not have a CD player so I was responsible for bringing a portable one along with all the necessary wiring to interface it to the van's radio. On this second point, I'm afraid I failed miserably. I remember watching my wife load this huge stack of CDs just as we were taking off. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, I know that the van doesn't have a CD player. But I don't usually drive the van. I drive the car. The car has a CD player. We drove for the first hour with the boys watching a DVD and the two of us talking. Even as A. reached for that first CD it did not occur to me that we had no way to play it. I was still blissfully driving along, happy to be on vacation - right up to the time when she asked, "So, where's the CD player? You did bring it along didn't you?" At times like this there's not much to do but confess to being an idiot (I think she accepted this explanation far too readily).
The next few minutes were spent looking through the audio books and finding that, indeed, many of them were on CD. Next, like rats in a dumpster, we searched every nook and cranny of the van, looking for any cassettes we might want to listen to. Our prize for this effort was an Elton John's Greatest Hits tape, released in 1974. We opted to instead ride in silence. CD cases slid around our feet, adding insult to injury.
Throughout our week of vacation, the boys tired of the DVDs and we played the few audio books we were able. After that, N. and B. played, talked, argued and fought. When things got too loud or heated, we would put in Elton John and crank up the volume. Initially, this stunned them just enough to quiet them. But after awhile, they began requesting the tape. After all, what little boy wouldn't want to listen to songs about crocodiles and rocket men? By the end of our trip, they were singing the tunes even when the tape wasn't playing. I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
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