The Fam Damily

After driving down to New York with my brother and parents over Thanksgiving weekend, I have newfound understanding of my parents’ longstanding aversion to road trips: Put four people who know how to push each other’s annoyance buttons in a metal box for five hours, add the highway’s odd combination of boredom and stress, and by the time you arrive at your destination you’re fantasizing about pulling a Thelma and Louise off the nearest precipice.

At least I had the best possible vehicle for the job, having blagged a Toyota Sienna minivan. I feel about minivans the same way I feel about prostate exams—I’m not ready for one yet, and even when I do need one I’m going to avoid it. But the Sienna figured to have enough space that the various occupants would be out of strangling distance from one another, and there was a DVD player in back so the passengers could watch the governor of California battle a hot female robot while I, as driver, had an exciting widescreen view of brake lights.

The most important difference between my family and I, from a road-trip perspective, is the fact that they all smoke. Since I wouldn’t let them smoke in the car, this ratcheted up the tension level considerably. Their nicotine breaks were structured around my bathroom breaks, which is probably one reason my mother offered me water roughly every 30 seconds. “Here, want some water?” she’d ask, shoving her unwieldy gallon jug in my face. When I declined on the grounds of saturation, she’d turn around and satisfy her compulsion to give someone some water by offering it to George, who, being a dog, lacked the ability to tell her that he was all set with that.

I tried to avoid stopping too often, because every time I did it turned into a half-hour project of smoking, buying junk food and water, and trying to get George to go to the bathroom so he’d stop farting in the car (although that may have eliminated someone’s alibi). At one such stop, at a Mobil station somewhere near the taint of New England that is New Haven, Conn., I was cornered by a local TV news crew doing the obligatory “Is this Thanksgiving traffic bad or what?” story. I was asked on camera how I was dealing with the traffic. Later on, as I pulled out onto I-95, I thought of plenty of things I should have said:

“Well, Chet, I figured I’d pull over right here and poke my eyes out with a sharpened Slim Jim, because that would be more fun than sitting in this traffic.”

Or, “Ain’t this one o’ them rest areas where a fella can get some servicin’, if you know what I mean? You’s purdy.”

Instead I said something stupid about needing beef jerky. Whatever I said, I’m just glad the Dyer family trip to New York is getting the intense media coverage it deserves.

I may not have been able to do anything about the traffic or mysterious in-car odors, but as driver, I had absolute control of the radio. For the most part everyone ignored my musical selections and my constant channel-changing, but my father and I did find unlikely common musical ground when the Biz Markie song “Pickin’ Boogers” came on. It turns out my dad and I both think that raps about boogers are hilarious. My mom and my brother, however, didn’t seem to share our opinion that lines like “playin’ ball in the gym, I put boogers on the basketball and pass it to him” are high comedy.

In between smoke breaks and long stretches of silence we managed to pack in lots of bickering, as I mentioned. But bickering is better than sexual innuendo, at least when the innuendo is between your parents. They were sitting in back watching Old School when it got to the part where Will Farrell comes out with an inflatable woman and asks if he should dress her as a nurse or a cheerleader. This prompted my mom to ask my dad, “Do you like the nurse or the cheerleader?” This may have been slightly (but only slightly) less disturbing if my mom wasn’t a nurse. I told them to stop that right away or I was getting out and running into the woods to see if it wasn’t too late to be raised by wolves.

Hey you two: get a room. And a plane ticket. ∂