Driving Miss Crazy

...and her brother.


The car is an interesting setting for parenting.  By interesting, I mean I wish that I was deaf in both of my ears and not just the one.  The car, and often times very near the car, have been the scene for many a volcanic eruption of family drama and disfunction.  Picture a volvo station wagon gliding down a stream of lava from the top of Mount Vesuvius.  I have found that the vasectomy inducing scenarios play out in three primary forms.


Agenda Differences


My agenda is usually to get in and out of the car quickly and efficiently, so I can, for example, get into Target and grab my mood stabilizing prescriptions spit spot.  Or, if we are at home, to hoof it into the house where, as you can imagine, I am super pumped to discover all the inspirational household duties that await.  Most days, recently, it seems like waste management has been taking top billing - always fun. Which of the toilets have my children neglected to flush?  Awesome.  All of them.  I love aged potty water. 


My son's agenda is to do his best possible impersonation of what molasses in January would look like were it oozing out of my car.  When we are at home in the garage, if I don't stay there with him by his side the entire 45 minutes it take him to exit the vehicle and make it to the front door, I am accused of being "mean" and "hurting his feelings."


My daughter's agenda in the car, as in all areas of her life, is to leave an F5 tornado level of destruction in her wake.  So when I ask her to fetch whatever wrapper, torn to shred piece of paper, little pieces of toys, art supplies, homework, mittens, hat, hair clips, etc that she has left behind, I get the drama treatment.  'Maaaahhhm. Do I haaaaave to?  I don't waaaant to."


Arguing


Arguing with each other.  Arguing with me.  Either way, I just want to punch a wall.  Since walls are not readily available in the car, I resort to hitting the steering wheel, a fit of yelling and demanding them to look out their respective windows and cease all talking or, occasionally, by calmly asking them to stop and then outlining a natural consequence that will occur if they choose to continue their offending behavior.
The type of response I have to their arguing is most often directly proportional to the topic of their bickering. The more contrived, the stronger my reaction.  For example, as was the case yesterday, they were arguing because each of their teachers apparently gave opposing reports of whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not.  My daughter said her teacher was older, so she has to be right.  Then my son was flown into a tizzy because "Why are all of your teachers older than my teachers?"  Back and forth it went for like 5 minutes. My son got himself on the verge of tears, until I, through clenched teeth and one of those slow and quite rages, told them that we would look it up on the internet when we got home and to STOP TALKING!
My other favorite recurring argument they have in the car is over the pronunciation of the spanish word for orange- "anaranjado."  They can go at it for what seems like decades, with this one.  My daughter takes her confident and methodical approach of making my son feel like he is losing the argument and he, in turn, becomes very angry and emotional.  I am going to remind you that this is over the way a word is pronounced. This debate rears its ugly head about once every couple of weeks.


Volume/Maturity Issues


I have to say with great confidence that I will not miss having a noisy car when my children are no longer children.  Don't get me wrong, I will miss having them with me and being able to talk with them, but lest I forget, this post will remind me that 93.6% (there may be a 0 to 40 point deviation) of the time we are in the car together they are making it quite difficult for me to make any kind of progress towards my personal growth goals.  I do feel guilty that even when they aren't arguing or fighting and they're actually being playful and sweet to one another, their loud and non-sensicle conversations push me over the edge.  
Things they find awesome and I don't: chanting, made up words, endless rhyming of made up words, made up lyrics, endless singing of made up lyrics, baby talk, weird voices and potty talk.  Besides the potty talk, which we by house rules, don't allow in excess, there is nothing morally wrong about all of the other activities listed.  Which, again, makes me feel guilty for not having a higher "kids being kids" threshold.  Thankfully for them I can tune some of that out, but a lot of times I just can't deal. 


A sampling of some of their vernacular splendor:

A:You're a foddy doddy head

D: You're a looloo head

A: You're a sookie, sake talky head

D: You're a bootie head

A: You're a bootie pootie head

D: You're a dingle wingle notter 

A: You're a dingle peanut butter bottom

On and on this goes, louder and louder. The uncontrollable laughter competes with the volume level for which of them is more intense, until I finally say with controlled vehemence, "I love you guys very much and there is nothing wrong with what you are saying right now, but I just can't handle it.  You can say all those things how ever much you want when we get home, but for right now, I need you guys to talk "normally." 


I'd like to think that I am not that abnormal in my levels of tolerance for my children's car riding behaviors.  Maybe I am.  Maybe I'm nailin' it on the head for some mom's right now.  Maybe a lot of you are 'amen'ing it all over the place.  Maybe I'm getting a lot of judgment sent my way and making a lot of mom's think they're better than me.  Either way, I guess I can take solace in the fact that it's kind of like I'm doing an act of community service.  Helping mom's by boosting their confidence or making them feel like they're not alone in their psychoses.  Whatever floats your boat, or in this case, whatever drives your juice stained, snack crumb laden, small plastic toy cluttered mini-van.