Not Your Average Family Road Trip - This should be interesting....

Today should prove to be interesting.  My grandma has been really sick these last couple of weeks, and all though she is better now, my parents insisted that we all go visit her just in case she kicks the bucket.  I personally don't think that she is and to tell the truth I feel kind of awkward about going.  Not that I don't want to go see her, because I do, but I haven't made time to visit my grandma for about a year.  The woman is 88 years old and as much as she wants me to bring my crazy brood of boys I am not up for them breaking my grandma's stuff.  Because I know they will - breaking stuff is what they do best. So I have avoided the situation all together.

Anyways, in light of the situation my parents insisted that my brother and I leave our kids with our spouses and head up with them to see grandma.  This is where it gets weird.  I will be going a road trip to grandma's with my parents and my brother, just like when we were kids!  I think its gonna be a lot of fun to be together as a nuclear family unit again but also very strange because its been for. ever. er. since that has happened.

So it got me thinking, how is this trip gonna go?  Its about a three hour ride to grandma's from my house and three hours back, plus on the way back we are going a different route and taking a ferry.  Are we gonna sit in our assigned family seats like when we were kids?  I always sat behind my dad who drove and my brother, Bill, always sat behind my mom.  Or now that we are all adults is it going to be different seats based on size of the person not age.

Well, if I have to sit in the back with my brother I can't say that I am looking forward to it.  Bill is five years older than me and born with rainbows and sunshine coming out of his ass.  Everyone in my family adores him.  He has only gotten on my family's shit list over the years because he tries to spend as little time with us as possible which upsets them deeply.  Me, they see all the time, so much that they would like to see less of me!  But that's neither here nor there.

We took so many road trips when we were growing up because it was quality family time that was cost effective.  We didn't have fancy trips and vacations every year because my parents couldn't afford it. Instead they drug us to every antique dealer in the Puget Sound because that was their idea of a "good time".  Bill and I begged to differ.   Because we couldn't fight with my parents we fought with each other.  Bill loved to torture me, as most older siblings do. 

He did this one thing with one of his hands where held it right over my face, like his palm to my nose, and no matter how hard I tried to muscle away from him I couldn't.  I know, it sounds lame, but believe me there was no escaping him and it was annoying as hell.  I think his favorite method of torture was giving my nougies.  They would be hard and as his knuckles riddled my skull I would shriek in pain.  I hated nougies with a passion!  He also loved to tell me how horribly I sang to the radio and that I was tone deaf - which is totally mean - I am an awesome singer!  Nobody ever hears me but I assure you, I rock.  He also had a way of knowing exactly what to do or say to get my parents mad at me and never at him.  He was a sneaky bastard and only I knew the real him.

Bill wasn't always a jerk.  He was my big brother and just like everyone else I adored him.  My adoration was different, it was based on the real person he was, not what everyone else saw.  Even though we were five years apart we were very close.  I knew most everything he was about and he had to listen to me tell him about what I liked whether he liked it or not.  Traveling in the car together Bill created some pretty fun games that only he and played together, not even our parents knew what in the hell we were doing back there.

The one I remember most we called the Big Bad Motor Miner game.  Basically a car would be behind us on the road and we would pretend that the grill of the car was a mouth and the closer it got the closer it came to eating us.  To our parents dismay we would scream, "Ahhhh the big bad motor miner!  Its gonna get us!  Ahhhhh!", every time a grill came near.  Simple, stupid but loads of fun for some reason.

Then there was the classic - Slug Bug.  This game needs no explanation I think that we all played this one as a kid.  I remember trying so hard to punch the crap out of his arm and it never hurting him not even once.  As for me on the other hand Bill showed no mercy and would bruise the crap out of my arm.  His arms were longer than mine so no matter how far away I tried to get from him it was never enough, he got me.

Road trips weren't just fun because of my brother but because of my parents too.  For some reason the conversation always turned to farts, crude jokes and anything and everything that made my mother cringe.  She hated that her little girl was more infatuated with how disgusting the men in the family were rather than taking lessons on how to be ladylike.  Ladylike just wasn't as funny as being crude so it really held no appeal for me.  So I burped, farted and joked with the guys even though my mom hated it. 

Needless to say today will be interesting.  I am pretty sure that Bill won't try to give me a nougie or play the Big Bad Motor Miner game but I am fairly certain that farts and crude jokes will play a crucial part in the ride.  After all those are the safe topics nowadays. As grown ups the big topics to stay away from are politics and  religion because my brother, my parents and I have differing viewpoints.  I am really excited for this time together and I look forward to the stories that we will share with each other on the ride.  I'll be sure to post an update as well as some pictures from our trip later this week.  So stay tuned...