Nothing says fun like driving 800 miles with twins in a hatchback.
My latest humour column for The Calgary Herald deals with this adventure. Here’s the beginning:
My family of four recently completed a drive across the prairies in our small hatchback. My husband had packed the hatch like our gear was Jenga blocks: pulling one item out could cause his system to fail.
I memorized the directions to Winnipeg: Drive straight until you feel like slitting your wrists. You’re ten per cent there.
Click here to read the rest of Crazy Car Games for the Traveling Family.
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Do you have any memories of traveling by car as a family,
or have you blocked them all out?
I’ve made that drive COUNTLESS times, but never with two children. You’re a super hero!
My memories include sleeping on the pile of suitcases that were on the seat between me and my brother, and waking up just often enough to turn my walkman up a little louder…..
The alphabet game is money for a road trip.
It is even more fun driving from Nova Scotia to London ON with three kids in the car.
Awesome piece! I love: “Mom, are we in Vagina yet?” & “Dad, will it be dark in Vagina?” Outstanding! 😉
We played a lot of Car Bingo. But first we had to make our own boards. We swapped boards after we created each square so everyone had a chance to try to stump another player. That took a long time because the roads were always bumpy and it made our lines and pictures all crooked. Once finished, it was time to play. My brother and I always argued about how it wasn’t fair to have to find certain objects. Finding cows and cars and bridges was easy, but finding a donkey or a hearse or a limousine seemed impossible. Then we would have to negotiate to see a the bus we just passed was close enough to a boat. Or my brother would ask if a “Q” on a license plate was close enough to the requisite “Z”. Somebody always ending up getting punched. Eventually, my mother drew an invisible line between the seats and told us to stop touching each other. We knew we needed to stop for real when our father threatened to pull over if we kept it up. He did it once on our way back from Toronto. And the thought of being stranded in a foreign country left me scarred for life.
Can you imagine? Being left alone in Ontario? 😉
We used to play alphabet games. Look for an A on a sign somewhere along the way. Then a B. We usually got slowed down with Q and Z. Sometimes we’d alter the game by finding the letter only on license plates. Or we’d play 20 Questions.
We did fine as long as it was just my older sister and me along with our parents, but anytime they took us and our little sister and brother, Katie bar the door!
We played similar games when our girls were younger. Far less torturous because the trip was only 70 miles. The worst game was Punch Buggy – when someone saw a VW Beatle (a punch bug), that person would punch the other person in the game. Sometimes, I swear, there was no punch bug. But there were plenty of “Ouch,” “Mom, she hit me. Make her cut it out.”
Yeah … those kinds of rides. I feel for you.
Oh, do I remember the road trip. Five children. Us. The Burns Girls.
I do not know why Dad tortured himself taking us on vacation. The arguments over who had to sit in front with Mom and Dad, who’s turn it was to sit by the window.
Peace (of sorts) came to our road trips in the form of a Volkswagen Van before the Flower Children of the seventies discovered them. A seat for everyone — if you counted the rumble seat where youngest sister, Sheri, had to sit — with her Tupperware up-chuck bowl.
I always chose a seat of the back bench seat because it was beyond The Long Arm of the Law (aka Dad when he’d “Had JUST about enough of us.”)
wow thats sounds fantastic..i too would try these ideas with my kid
*Snorting with giggles* This is so funny and apt and holy God, you lot are brave, doing this in a hatchback!
Our family adventures were never this epic, unless you count the time my dad threatened (during a three-hour traffic jam on the 401) to haul us both out of the car and spank us, if we didn’t behave.
We didn’t behave (My brother was on my side and I was touching him, according to him) and so my passive, mild-mannered father yanked us from the brown station wagon in front of all those people and soundly spanked our butts. (It was the 70’s…you could do that and not get arrested)
I am pretty sure that the cheering we heard wasn’t JUST from my mum in the front seat.
I’m still a little confused about the picnic game…
Geez! I can SYMPATHIZE with you on SO many levels. Wennipeg. Car trips. Eck. Oh, P.S. Stopping by from Twitter. You don’t know me. 😉 (red head)
I peed my pants just a little reading this. We haven’t graduated from I Spy yet. We even played it camping where everytime it was “I spy something green.”