Traveling Teams

Family vacations are like going on the road with your team. Instead of arguing over which boy in your American History class has the nicest smile, you debate which radio station should provide the background music during an everlasting car ride. You don’t get to fight over who rides shotgun because you are always relegated to the backseat, along with your sibling. There, you stare at the back of your parents’ heads and wonder why they even invented combs for men like your father. You have no doubt why those little handles on the passengers’ seat roofs were made. Your mother uses them in one car ride more than the wipers are used during a torrential downpour.
You discover new and wonderful things about your family on trips together, things you otherwise might never know. Your mother can sleep through anything as long as her nose doesn’t detect smoke or a fowl aroma coming from the bathroom. It must be the seven pillows she shields herself with that provide a soundproof surrounding. Your dad can’t go a night in a hotel room without drinking at least two cups of water in those Styrofoam cups courtesy of housekeeping. Your older sister is almost always last to doze off, and it would be a miracle if you could stay up later than her just once. You discover your own peculiarity of being a complete sheets-hog.
Just as teammates often envy each other’s talents or positions, family members are jealous of each other’s unique talents. Your sister seems to find enjoyment in the most mundane activities. You wish you had the same capacity for appreciating dullness and discovering adventure in even the lamest landmarks. Your father has the natural gift of amusing the entire family with irrelevant and untimely jokes and information. His facts and figures are way off the subject matter but good for a laugh nonetheless. You personally can spend an entire afternoon listening to a baseball game while relaxing on the beach. Other vacationers might like to obtain solace in such activities. Your parents are in the dark when you and your sister speak in arcane manner. Only the two of you, as close as you are, know the inside, hidden meaning of the dialogue. On rare occasion, your parents will pull off this trick, leaving the two of you stumped and trying to figure things out. If Dad is the team captain, Mom is the head coach. She seems to get what she wants and makes the toughest decisions in family drama. Hotel too dirty? Time for a new room! Are you seriously thinking about wearing THAT shirt to dinner with Grandma? Better change now! You’re crazy if you really think we’re going to a ballgame in this weather! Art history museum, here we come! Not to make Mom sound like a strict dictator who makes her players do 7,000 push-up during practice, but she is the one calling the shots. Her authority is well-known, and keeps everyone in the family in line and on track. Sometimes you have members of your team who appear on an entire different wavelength than the other players. That could anybody in your family at any given time. You all have your own agenda during vacations. If you could get paid for every time someone in your family repeated something, you wouldn’t have to work another day your entire life. The subplots of a traveling team involve where you might dine after the game. Or, the coach might ask every person to write down their strengths and weaknesses after a match. In your family, the subplots happen when you nudge your sister in the backseat and plan some scheme to annoy your parents. Family vacations subplots are getting lost on highways with weird names and snickering as your relatives reveal their obscure accents.
Family trips are similar to endangered species. Both are so rare you can’t help but enjoy the ones that pop up. Dad maps out the entire travel plan weeks in advance. Mom starts packing and warning everyone around her what to expect on this vacation. The morning you leave home, Mom is the one panicking. Dad thinks mostly about where to stop for breakfast, and your sister is still blow drying her hair as the rest of the family waits in the car with the engine running. The actual drive is where the fun flourishes. Stories and tales about every subject entail. There is little talk about which teachers are the toughest, which classes are unfair, and which girls in school are kidding themselves with how they dress. Teams discuss these matters and all things relevant to school. Mostly, family vacation discussions consist of stories involving strange neighbors, boring work assignments, and grievances about particular family members. A few compliments and respectful adages are thrown in just so hard feelings won’t subside. Dad stops to top of the gas tank, while your sister leafs through some travel brochure she picked up at the last rest stop. Mom gets out, stretches her legs, while you sit with headphones blaring in your ears. You wish they could hear the song because it relates too well to how you feel today. You remember a time traveling with your tennis team in high school. It was a late Friday night, and the team just won a close match. Suddenly, someone started singing. You couldn’t hear any music, until the singer rapidly increased the volume. Soon the whole team was singing the familiar tune. Those were indeed the best times . Why not transport yourself back? You begin by humming the song reverberating and penetrating your brain. The humming turns into a high-pitched shrill that grabs the attention of the other three passengers. They all recognize the song, and Mom starts to chime in with the next verse. Dad gives her a mind-boggling glare for her implausible action. Before you know it, you’re all depleting your dignity to the catchy rhyme. It‘s just like the tennis team’s out-of-the-blue glee. You can see your father peering at you through the rear-view mirror lovingly. It reminds you of the way your Coach used to do the same thing when you told him his team had too much fun to lose. The gym bags and racquets are replaced with suitcases and toiletries, the drivers equally handsome.

Parting Points: My family is leaving town this weekend to visit relatives in West Virginia, so this blog will be on hiatus. If you’re a member of my family and read this entry, I love you all and hope you find this sarcasm amusing. If not, you can take it out on me during the eight hour drive…and I’ll write another vacation blog when we get back.