Our family mostly enjoys road trips. After all, what red-blooded American couldn’t appreciate the open road or gas station snacks or alphabet games or playlists (formerly known as mix tapes)? Unfortunately, road trips are preceded by packing. And while packing once seemed pretty simple, it is now one of the most dreaded processes in our household. Once bags start getting stuffed and thermostats start getting adjusted, it’s simply a matter of time. Someone will break. Someone’s voice will raise. Someone’s temper will flare up. Just wait.
Packing did not used to be like that, mind you. The twenty five year old versions of ourselves only needed toothbrushes, underwear and books to read. The thirty something (ahem) versions of ourselves need far more. There are toys and snacks and blankets and technological devices. In other words, packing started to suck when we had kids. Plain and simple. My wife recently wrote a post about autopsy without blame, but kids are exempt from that. Feel free to blame children for anything and everything…especially when they’re not around. Or online.
Regardless, packing inevitably causes problems. We’ll argue over how much we’re bringing or we’ll get stressed because the kids keep asking questions or we’ll develop a martyr complex because we’re doing so much. Eventually, everything gets packed and everyone gets going. But the adrenaline takes time to dissipate, and those first few minutes of driving can be somewhat demanding. Especially if something’s forgotten.
And that’s precisely what happened last year sometime. We’d finally escaped Chicago’s city limits when our son asked for some iPod time. So Amber reached for the iPod and headphones…only to find that the headphones were missing. And I kinda flipped out. To be fair, several concerns arose in my mind just then. I was picturing Sam blasting Yo Gabba Gabba throughout the car. I was picturing his younger sister waking from nap time because of the volume. And – most importantly – I was mourning the loss of NPR podcasts…a blessed road trip tradition that only works when the little people in the backseat are sleeping and/or wearing headphones. So I said some words that have since lived on in infamy:
“You forgot the headphones?! Those were like the most important thing for us to remember.”
It was an unfortunate choice of words. Clearly, the headphones were not the most important thing…they probably did not rank in the top 50 most important things. But I refused to allow logic or rationality to get in the way. Strangely, we survived the next two hours without headphones (shocking, I know). And I was forced to admit that perhaps headphones were not that important, after all.
The next time we were packing – when everyone was rushing around and emotions were running high – I casually joked that we’d better remember those incredibly important headphones. Amber was more than happy to join the fray, laughing at my previous overreaction and mocking our mutual tendency to stress out before trips. It’s become both an inside joke and a subtle reminder. We never pack that car without referencing the all-important headphones, “Oh, don’t forget the headphones! They’re incredibly important, you know.” We laugh at my poor choice of words. We shake our heads at the trivialities that become issues somehow. We remember that stressing out over road trip preparations (over most things, really) is pretty pointless.
Family narratives like this are pretty crucial, actually (we’ve written about others here before). The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves do far more than make us laugh…they remind us about who we were, who we are and who we are becoming. In other words, they’re far more important than a pair of headphones. Then again, most things are.
Great one, Cliff.
Love it! Hilarious.