Spending 10 hours in the car alone with my kid doesn't scare me. Figuring out which movies to load onto her Kindle Fire before spending 10 hours alone in the car with her does.
Here's the thing--if I get it right, I'm in for 10 hours of angels softly singing Kumbaya as Alexis happily stares at her tiny Kindle screen with a dazed and oblivious expression that is reserved for moments when she won't blink or move her lips for fear that I rip that Kindle out of her hands and force her to look for license plates from every state. She is silent, is what I'm saying. SILENT. For hours on end.
Do you know how much duct tape is required to make that happen when we're at home? A LOT.
If I get the movie selection wrong, however, I'm in for 10 hours of My Every Nightmare Come True. The kid will grow bored of the movie and start talking to me. "Why do boys have penises and girls don't?" "What's a 'Sandusky?'" and "Who do you think is cuter, Justin Bieber or Zac Efron?" are the sorts of things she will start rattling off in rapid-fire questioning mode. It's like being interrogated by the FBI, but without rules or boundaries or any sort of logic to the questions.
I can handle her interrogations most of the time, but I am not ashamed to admit that I'm not woman enough to take ten hours of it without having a total and complete mental collapse.
Before we drove down to Tennessee last week, I spent hours pouring over new movie options on Amazon. I needed something cheap, definitely age-appropriate, and GOOD. Captivating. Riveting. Brain-sucking. ALL OF THOSE THINGS.
Please keep in mind that Alexis thinks The Wiz is a good movie. Seriously. She loved that damn movie.
So, uh, her taste might be a little ... off. That makes it harder to predict what she will and won't like. It's all a game of Sanity Roulette.
I knew I had won the Sanity Roulette game before we crossed into Ohio. I hadn't heard the kid so much as blink. I happily rocked out to the latest Linkin Park as I drove and drove and drove with silence reigning supreme over the back seat.
I don't really know when the last time was that I had an hour and a half in the car to myself, but that's what it was. Alexis may have been sitting just a few feet away, but she didn't care about me or my music. She didn't even notice when a giant bird flew right into the side of the car inches from her head. It made a loud and horrifying THUNK when it struck, but she just kept on staring at the screen as I fought the urge to turn around and play nurse to the bird as it flapped around in the middle of the road.
Silence. Beautiful, beautiful silence.
Until suddenly the short person in the back seat shattered the silence by breaking into a round of applause and screaming, "I LOVE THAT MOVIE!"
Sounds adorable, right? Just picture how startling something like that can be when you don't know it's coming. I'm not really sure how I didn't pee my pants in that moment, to be honest.
Regardless, the kid watched the same movie ALL THE WAY to Tennessee. She made it all the way through four times, and each time I knew the movie was over because she hooted and hollered about how great it was.
I've never seen it, but I guess it's time I gave in and saw what all of the fuss is about, eh?
