On my way to work I finally paid enough attention to a Ford billboard to read that the Ford Everest can now be had by one and all for a low low price of 99,000 all in including a DVD system. I counted three tiny video screens.
What does it say about how we relate to people that we actually need video to help us get through to point B. It’s our fault, we Gen-Xers. Even as we fantasize about mass-murdering these bratty millenials, we are actually raising our kids to be monster brats with the attention span of a flea. What, we can’t stand our own children that we have to keep them occupied with Barney and Disney just to get them to shut up and behave and not bother mommy and daddy?
When I was a kid I enjoyed riding cars. I liked that I can just stare out the window and think a million random thoughts about the people and scenes that went by. I could sing Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell songs today because I spent a lot of weekends listening to them on our way to wherever. My sisters and I learned to behave and entertain ourselves in the backseat. And I suppose my mom and my stepdad had their share of suffering through backseat tantrums and sibling fights. The point is we learned to just be together. We talked to each other when we wanted to. We sang along to the radio if we felt like it and all throughout we sat side by side trying as best as we can not to annoy each other.
But with DVD hounding our children until the last bastion of cramped familial space what will happen to tolerance, togetherness, elective idle thought and country music? Are we raising a generation who measure road trips not by the memories they made throughout but by the movies they watched?
When my goddaughter was a toddler we (my goddaughter, her mother and me) used to sing along to nursery rhymes every morning on our way to work, and she to her lola’s house. But it wasn’t like we were Brady Bunch derivatives or anything. Rush hour traffic and looped nursery rhymes coupled with my goddaughter’s precocious chatter occasionally took its toll on our nerves. But I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about it now. I only hope that she remembers that period and has good memories about it the way that those long car rides left me with good thoughts about my family. And I hope the LTO starts banning DVD systems from cars. I say, take it away, Kenny.
