Car Games in California

As all of us are aware, each and every child in America must ask the question, “are we there yet” a minimum of 327,432 times or they will never mature into an adult. Apparently, my son was let in on this factoid and made sure to diligently work to meet his childhood quota while we were on the road in California. As the car was clearly in motion when this question was asked, it seemed somewhat obvious to me that perhaps we were not. But, that is just me. Now, I could have always used my father’s very wise “in ten minutes” answer that he used each and every time we asked the same question when we were kids. Didn’t bear any proportion to where we were or where we were going but, by gosh, we all somewhat figured out after 50 or so tries that it was a rather futile question and quit asking it and moved on to “Mom, he’s looking at me.”

But, always eager to improve on the past, I decided to give my son the answer he deserved. So, I asked for more information. What did he mean by “there?” After all, how could I answer the question accurately if I didn’t know where “there” was? Wouldn’t that be cheating him of the top notch parenting he deserves? So, again I went after his definition of “there”. Specifically, for him did being “there” mean that his basic needs for food, shelter and clothing be met or did he need to be fully self-actualized which I considered might be a little bit of an overreach, even in California where they have that medical marijuana, not that I would know of such things. And, even with the unconditional positive regard of his parents and sister, had he considered existential angst? Would that impact his being “there?” So, what did he mean?

Watching his careful consideration, I could tell he was in very deep thought,and I knew I had taken the right path, especially when he said he needed to have a bit of a conversation with his “guys”, the stuffed animal retinue that accompanies us on our travels. Told him I thought he could get the benefit of brainstorming unless, of course, they fell into groupthink.

So, he moved on and asked each very carefully if they had to pee. Apparently, they did not as he began pointing out cars which wasn’t very difficult as we were on a freeway. Then, another clever although not original idea came to me – the alphabet game as in, find a license plate with an A and then a B and then so on. That used up 2.75 minutes and was good to approximately Q. From what I observed, Q ticked off California in the past and was banned from the state.

And then, voila, it came to me. A new game. I called it Ration. Somehow it just came to me as I reflected on the $4.75 a gallon gas in the bear state. All that was needed was several movie size boxes of Jujubes and a GPS and, by gosh, we had the GPS. I made sure it could be viewed by the budding backseat driver who had been putting forth a lot of effort to make sure I was always very well advised on what the speed “number” was and how I was doing in relation to it. Apparently he was conducting some scientific field study as he also queried my father on the same issue on our drive home from the airport in the middle of the night on our return to Atlanta where the official airport slogan is “If you die and go to hell, you first must go through Atlanta.”

But, I digress. So we acquired several hundred of the chewy candies and began playing my new game. Specifically, the rules were that he could have one Jujube each and every time the GPS showed that we had covered two miles. He also had to give his sister half of one and he had to give me one every six miles. As it takes approximately one minute to chew one of those things, I figured that would work well and would only leave one minute for his speed numbers check.

But, I also gave him options so he could exercise his mind. He could play Super Ration instead. He could have one of the globs every three miles, did not have to give any to his mother but the sister requirement stayed the same. Oddly, he wanted to know about Super Super Ration and Super Super Super Ration so I gave him the directions. For Super Super Ration, he and his sister could have one piece for every ten miles shown on the GPS and if he chose to play Super Super Super Ration, he needed to find the most ostentatiously wealthy person he could see and hand over all the candy while reserving none for himself for no good reason. Somehow, he just didn't get that one.

Oddly, after we arrived, the kids seemed to have a wee bit of energy and worked at bouncing on the beds while trying to reach the ceiling. That was, of course, after the little one did her “Dance With The Swimming Diaper My Head” routine. Need to brush up on my traditional Chinese folk dances as I had not been previously introduced to this one.