Today I Learned: How to Survive an Annual Road Trip

It’s nasty and early in the morning. Something like 8:00 in the morning on a day off school. Dad wakes up earliest (it’s implied that he enjoys these things.) Mom wakes up soon after, because Dad is not very quiet. They do a lot of setting up and rattling around, preparing to make our road trip just perfect.

Lunches are packed, little siblings are dragged out of bed, and everyone scrambles to remember that extra thing that everyone else forgot. The “extra thing” could be a lunch, or something to store trash in. It could be a wallet, a phone, or a favorite stuffed animal. The funny thing is, no matter how hard you look, you can’t remember you lost it until you are too far away from home to retrieve it.

“Why can’t we just stay home this weekend?” I cry, wishing that this panic was all a bad memory. Nobody answers, they’re too busy packing, checking things over, and otherwise being useful. Then we’re off on the road. Conversation is usually pretty negligible when your family is as big as mine. Half of us try to slide into the ennui provided by the phones and other devices that we brought along, and the other half are too busy fighting each other to understand what they’re actually fighting about.

Fortunately, the two kids fighting in the back seat pass out with the senseless spontaneity that their fight started. Something rots quietly under one of the seats, slowly turning into food for the ants that inhabit our minivan. The smell mixes with that of sweat, claustrophobia, and just a little desperation. I want to vomit, just a little, but know I can’t. If I did, my breakfast would mix with the rest of the brew, and the backseat would become unbearable. So, I hold it in. You don’t really have any other options. It’s basically written into the rules that you can’t ever stop driving, because if the car stops, it will take upwards of fifteen minutes to get everyone ready to get going again.

It gets to that special time of day when everyone’s phones run out of battery and the people in the car actually have to talk to each other. Somebody tries to sleep, while the rest of us sing the Good Ole Road Trip Songs from our childhood- “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “The Second story window.” It’s actually super enjoyable (unless you’re trying to sleep).

It sounds like I hate road trips, but that isn’t entirely true. Being miserable together helps bond a family in a way that taking an airplane never could (and it costs about half as much, too!) A road trip teaches you to appreciate the little things in life: the clean, fresh air that fills your lungs outside; having enough space to swing both your arms and your legs; even just being able to avoid hearing other people breathe. It helps build character, mental fortitude, collaboration and critical thinking, and conflict resolution skills. And that’s basically all the 21^st Century Skills that you’ll ever need to know.

As I step out of the minivan into the snow surrounding a gas station on one of our infrequent stops, I feel like I’ve just done something incredible: traveling as far as we did was arduous, practically a journey to the moon. In the words of Josiah Stoll paraphrasing Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for man, but if I have to get back in that minivan, I’m going to freak.”