Childhood Memories
Mom occasionally asks me (Tina) to write articles for her column in the Buffalo Reflex recounting some event oranother from my childhood. These are usually fun recollections of things that seemed traumatic at the time. These stories are often recounted at times where a quick stop at Guiltsville helps my cause in some way, such as when I've forgotten someone's birthday. I like to call these gems "stories from therapy". Here's one I wrote several years ago.
This tale recalls a variety of car trips, Sunday- drives or longer vacation trips. My parents, particularly my dad, have this odd habit of taking different routes wherever they go. For example, if they took the highway on the way to town, then they'd have to take backroads on the way home. Perhaps it was a sense of adventure to see new sights. Sounds pretty normal and kind of nice, right? My parents thought of these scenic off-the-beaten-path drives as familiar old friends, routes they had driven many times. However, I hadn't experienced most of these drives before. We could have been driving in another country for all I knew. Well, when I was younger, I had a pretty intense fear of getting lost. Perhaps it was all those years of watching "Lost in Space". These unknown routes created a great sense of anxiety within my young mind, as I assumed that since I didn't know where we were, my parents didn't either. My parents, in their quest for the utmost psychological health for their children, always noticed my anxiety and reacted quickly. "Oh,no! We must be lost", they would always say in their most convincing voices. This is how they reacted to my fear, by feeding it. They, of course, thought it was humorous to watch the panic-stricken look that would sweep across my face as I scanned all the windows looking for signs of familiarity in case it would be left up to me to save us. Of course, they would laugh, to which I would scream "Stop laughing at me!", which always elicited the reply "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you". I would then generally calmly say "BUT I'M NOT LAUGHING!" It was a familiar cycle of which my parents never seemed to tire.
These traumatic, "we-must-be-lost" drives were nothing compared to the experience of long car trips. Understand that my mother doesn't travel well. She doesn't sleep well in "foreign" beds or in motel rooms where one can hear everything that happens outside the room. We usually took short trips to locales within a 150-mile radius of our home. My entire childhood memory bank only recalls one trip that lasted more than one night away from home. That was a trip to Arlington, TX to visit my uncle, Richard. We drove in a two-door, 1977 Ford Mustang II from Fair Grove, MO to Texas in August of the year I turned six. That's approximately eight hours with four people crammed into a small car, one of whom was six and the other eight. Now, to comprehend the full weight of what it meant for my brother and I to be in a closed space together for eight hours, you have to understand that my brother and I were arch-enemies. Tim was Afghanistan to my United States.
For those of you unfamiliar with the inside of a 1977 Mustang II, I'll offer a brief description. The bucket seats were upholstered in
some sort of fake, red leather to match the exterior. There was a "hump" between the two bucket seats in the back of the car. That hump was Switzerland and for Tim and I, a zone that neither of us owned or controlled. Tim, however, disregarded the international laws which governed the backseat of our car, and often crossed over the neutral hump-zone in order to pinch, poke, hit or otherwise pester me when the parents weren't looking. This normally led to my attempts at vigilante justice, such as hitting, biting or kicking him back. If that didn't work, whining usually ensued as a last ditch effort to attract peace-keeping efforts from the superpowers in the front seat. That usually ended in unpleasant parental sanctions, such as "Don't make me pull this car over!"
Whether it was an eight-hour trip or just a couple of hours, the bickering in the backseat was usually the same. Tim and I just couldn't manage to get along. By the time we got to wherever we were going, everyone in the family was so on edge that we just wanted to be alone for a while. I'm not entirely certain how my parents didn't "accidentally lose" Tim or I so they could maintain their sanity. Actually, I don't know a judge or jury who would have convicted my parents for having sold one or both of us on the Black Market. Don't'feel too sorry for my parents, though. The Battle of the Backseat was a nice little payback for all the trauma-inducing times they said "Oh, no! We must be lost!"
This tale recalls a variety of car trips, Sunday- drives or longer vacation trips. My parents, particularly my dad, have this odd habit of taking different routes wherever they go. For example, if they took the highway on the way to town, then they'd have to take backroads on the way home. Perhaps it was a sense of adventure to see new sights. Sounds pretty normal and kind of nice, right? My parents thought of these scenic off-the-beaten-path drives as familiar old friends, routes they had driven many times. However, I hadn't experienced most of these drives before. We could have been driving in another country for all I knew. Well, when I was younger, I had a pretty intense fear of getting lost. Perhaps it was all those years of watching "Lost in Space". These unknown routes created a great sense of anxiety within my young mind, as I assumed that since I didn't know where we were, my parents didn't either. My parents, in their quest for the utmost psychological health for their children, always noticed my anxiety and reacted quickly. "Oh,no! We must be lost", they would always say in their most convincing voices. This is how they reacted to my fear, by feeding it. They, of course, thought it was humorous to watch the panic-stricken look that would sweep across my face as I scanned all the windows looking for signs of familiarity in case it would be left up to me to save us. Of course, they would laugh, to which I would scream "Stop laughing at me!", which always elicited the reply "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you". I would then generally calmly say "BUT I'M NOT LAUGHING!" It was a familiar cycle of which my parents never seemed to tire.
These traumatic, "we-must-be-lost" drives were nothing compared to the experience of long car trips. Understand that my mother doesn't travel well. She doesn't sleep well in "foreign" beds or in motel rooms where one can hear everything that happens outside the room. We usually took short trips to locales within a 150-mile radius of our home. My entire childhood memory bank only recalls one trip that lasted more than one night away from home. That was a trip to Arlington, TX to visit my uncle, Richard. We drove in a two-door, 1977 Ford Mustang II from Fair Grove, MO to Texas in August of the year I turned six. That's approximately eight hours with four people crammed into a small car, one of whom was six and the other eight. Now, to comprehend the full weight of what it meant for my brother and I to be in a closed space together for eight hours, you have to understand that my brother and I were arch-enemies. Tim was Afghanistan to my United States.
For those of you unfamiliar with the inside of a 1977 Mustang II, I'll offer a brief description. The bucket seats were upholstered in
some sort of fake, red leather to match the exterior. There was a "hump" between the two bucket seats in the back of the car. That hump was Switzerland and for Tim and I, a zone that neither of us owned or controlled. Tim, however, disregarded the international laws which governed the backseat of our car, and often crossed over the neutral hump-zone in order to pinch, poke, hit or otherwise pester me when the parents weren't looking. This normally led to my attempts at vigilante justice, such as hitting, biting or kicking him back. If that didn't work, whining usually ensued as a last ditch effort to attract peace-keeping efforts from the superpowers in the front seat. That usually ended in unpleasant parental sanctions, such as "Don't make me pull this car over!"Whether it was an eight-hour trip or just a couple of hours, the bickering in the backseat was usually the same. Tim and I just couldn't manage to get along. By the time we got to wherever we were going, everyone in the family was so on edge that we just wanted to be alone for a while. I'm not entirely certain how my parents didn't "accidentally lose" Tim or I so they could maintain their sanity. Actually, I don't know a judge or jury who would have convicted my parents for having sold one or both of us on the Black Market. Don't'feel too sorry for my parents, though. The Battle of the Backseat was a nice little payback for all the trauma-inducing times they said "Oh, no! We must be lost!"
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