Straight Trippin'

Some of the best childhood memories I have are of car trips. My parents divorced when I was seven and my sister was two, and my dad and stepmom moved to Montana, so we spent a lot of time in the car. A LOT of time. For holidays and summer vacations, we'd go to and from Colorado and Montana, with Casper, Wyoming being the drop-off point. It's about an eight hour drive total that Bimpsy and I would be in the car, so Mom and Dad were each charged with about four hours of having to keep us entertained. We used to feel bad when we thought of the parent headed back home for a lonely drive without us while we drove off with the other one in the opposite direction, and we'd usually cry with thoughts of missing them. Natural by-product of divorce; no big deal. Besides, once we'd get on the road with the inevitable "treats" we'd always stop to get, our tears were melted away by thoughts of all the new, fun stuff we'd get to do. We didn't have DVD players in the headrests or Gameboys to play, but I swear we were never bored.



First of all, no road trip ever got started without the race to the car. You didn't win just by being the first to touch the car. You had to touch the car, get in the back seat, close your door, and then snap your seatbelt into the lock, in that order. Miss any of those steps and it's an automatic disqualification. Being the big sister, of course it was my obligation to win every time, but Bimpsy was a skinny little bugger who could run fast. The race was really won by the smooth execution of the door-closing, seatbelt-buckling maneuver, and it was pretty much anyone's game. If she got a good enough lead, I could kiss my imaginary trophy goodbye.



When we were in the car with Mom, it was pretty much a given that we'd spend the majority of the time belting our lungs out to all of the country tapes she had. If I heard one Reba McEntyre or Judds' song once a day for the rest of my life, it still wouldn't come close to all of the time we spent trying to outsing those tapes. My mom even dubbed us "The Dudds" and Bimps and I would wait, calm, cool, and collected, until Mom would knowingly pop a tape in. We'd kick off the pre-game show with something crazy like Lionel Richie, just to warm up the pipes. Then we'd run offstage, change outfits three times, re-paint our nails three times to match all the outfits we changed, tease our hair, and come back out with our standard repertoire. Oh, the days of singing about the affair our husbands were having with "Whoever's in New England," how our backs ached after "Workin' in a Coal Mine," and how we could have missed the pain, but we'd have had to miss "The Dance." Nevermind that two members of The Dudds hadn't even hit puberty yet and couldn't possibly know what half the songs were about. Dadgummit, we wuz country sangers.



When we were with Dad and Sonjah, it was all about the accommodations. Back before the seatbelt law, they would fold down the backseats and lay blankets down all across the back, put down some pillows, and add a tacklebox loaded with crayons and coloring books, paper to write stories on, books to read, and anything else we might have possibly needed. It was The Fort, and it was awesome. Obviously the idea was that with the blankets and pillows, we would be enticed to sleep and leave the grown-ups in peace. Yeah, right. That completely backfired, every time. Kids can see right through that trick so don't even try it. The only time The Fort isn't cool is when one kid is sick. My dad says he still laughs when he thinks about one trip where we had just gotten started and I said, "Dad, I don't mean to be a pest, but I'm gonna throw up." As if that's the first thing parents think of when their child is sick. "Dang that sick little throwing-up kid; she is such a PEST!" Luckily, we made it to the side of the road in time, and I spent the majority of the rest of the trip with my head hung over the now emptied-out tacklebox, just in case we didn't make it off the highway.



My dad was also the coolest at telling stories or making up games. I only recently found out from one of The Dude's cowboy folklore books that the story of Falling Rock was not actually made up by my dad, and that just sucked. I read the "real" story, and my dad's version blew that one out of the water. I tried to re-tell it once to The Dude when we were driving back to Oklahoma to see his family, and I got it all screwed up and ended up telling some long, half-assed version of it. Now every time we go somewhere and we see that road sign, he always says, "No, I do NOT want to hear the story of Falling Rock!" Some people just have no appreciation. The games, though. That's where Dad had the real expertise, and they were great because they always involved winning some money, usually the nickels and dimes from the ashtray. He'd take some standard car game like the License Plate game (which SUCKS when you're driving through Wyoming!) or Guess What I'm Thinking Of and put some crazy twist on it. And of course, we were always amazed that he knew where Lone Tree Hill was, like it was some major landmark like the Empire State Building. Turns out, that was what every hill was that had a single tree standing on it.



"Hey girls, look! Lone Tree Hill!"



"Wow! Cool! You know everything, Dad!"



Yeah, I still break out the Lone Tree Hill once in a while.



There was the trip when Mom decided to throw an apple out of the passenger window and it hit the roof right at the top of the window and exploded all over the ceiling. We were picking apple chunks out of our hair the whole trip. Then there was the time that Dad and Sonjah brought my best friend Maria down to Casper and dropped her off at the convenience store we always stopped at for trip goodies. Mom and Dad exchanged us and we were on our way back with Dad, and yes, I was totally surprised when I walked into the store and saw Maria, sitting at a little table, waiting casually. It was awesome. She would go on to accompany us on many, many more road trips, both of us listening individually to our Pretty in Pink soundtracks on our walkmans. I love that regardless of who we were with, Mom or Dad and Sonjah, that they would always stop and let us climb Independence Rock, no matter what kind of a time schedule we were on. Same with the rest stop in Sheridan, WY, that we made Dad stop at so we could go on the swings and go through the little museum there. As we got older, we'd whine when we stopped there because we were too cool for swings and museums. Dad would just turn off and say, "Hey, it's tradish." And it was. A tradition that got us through each and every trip, and I still secretly loved that we did it.


I have to say, though, that the best thing about the road trips was my sister. That was it. Boonzie + Bimpsy = Party in a Bag, Baby. Staring contests, smiling contests, Hangman, singing, playing Dad's games, making up our own games, even fighting. It was never a dull moment. We made up more verses to The Diarrhea Song than anyone could ever imagine, and somehow managed to get our parents to laugh at almost all of them. At least until we would get the booming, "ENOUGH, GIRLS!" We would make up poems. We would make up raps. Neither one of us could do a beat box to save our lives, but I think we could have out-battled any other sibling rap duo out on the road.


As a matter of fact, let me leave you with a much-loved first and only verse of a destined to be Grammy-winning rap, if only we could have stopped laughing first:



[waive ya hands in the aiy-yah, like ya just don't cay-yah]



In our best Mr. T. voices, leaving the "L" off of every word that rhymes with "fool."



Don't mess aroun' wit me, foo'

Or else I'll make you droo'

in schoo'

And you won't look very coo'

When ya swimmin' in a poo'

of droo'!!



Untapped lyrical genius right there. Kind of makes you wonder why our parents never tried to help foster our talents and get our rap careers to take off.



Hmm. Maybe their memories of the road trips aren't as fond as mine. Weird.