Three Kids in a Car

I drive a van. (Don’t ask me why because it’s a long convoluted story and does not give a good representation of my mental health and good decision making. It was an emotional decision, made at a bad time in my life. Enough said). But I digress.

My son borrowed my van, otherwise known as Velma, to take his family for a weekend away. He has three kids, and as the van has quad seats and a full third row bench, it was more comfortable for a trip requiring hours in the car.

The kids would have had their iPods, their tablets and such to keep them occupied. It made me think back to those 7 hour trips we made as kids to see the grandparents in Ohio.

The only car I remember was a station wagon. I’m old, so that would have been before the law requiring seat belts. I recollect early morning starts where sleepy kids were allowed to sleep part of the way, in a make-shift bed in the back of the station wagon.

But what did we do to entertain ourselves for all those hours? How many times did we ask, “Are we there, yet?”

My daughter has a newer van, with a built in DVD player and multiple charging sites for all those gadgets. All this is the norm for this younger generation.

One day, as I was walking to my van with my grandson, he rushed ahead and pulled on the door, found it locked and looked to me to open it. “Hold on,” I said. “You need a key, and you’ll have to wait until I get there.” He looked surprised and I showed him the key, a real key, not an electronic thing. I explained the van was old, like me, and didn’t have keyless entry.

No electronic locks, no DVD, and no charging port. What a relic. A dinosaur.

I went through the same thing with my granddaughter when she looked for a charging cord for her phone. In her mother’s van the cord is always there and ready. “I don’t have one,” I explained. “Don’t need one as I don’t have a cell phone.”

Shock, horrors, dismay!

I’m feeling my age and out of touch with the times, like my van, I’m a relic from another time.