Car Games and Parents' Sanity

(Sung to the tune of Oh My Darling, Clementine)

♫ ♪ Are we there yet?

      Are we there yet?

      Are we goooooonaaa get there soon?

      I can’t wait t’ get t’ our destination.

      Please let us… get there soon! ♪ ♫

Songs like this are the reason that parents dread long car trips. My middle brother and I were infamous for the songs and nonsensical jokes we came up with on the long drive from our home in south Florida up to Tennessee. But today the game has changed, quite literally! There are so many different types of handheld game systems on the market that most parents don’t ever have to listen to songs made up by their bored children. As long as you have enough batteries, kids can stay occupied all the way from Florida up to Washington state!

But what about us? Growing up we didn’t have fancy iPods to listen to. Everyone in the car sang along with the bright red Wee Sing Kids Songs cassette tape. We didn’t have DVD players that magically appeared from the ceiling. Everyone looked out the window for different states’ license plates and VW Beetles aka Punch Buggies. No one had handheld gaming systems. Instead we played Thumb War and Rock, Paper, Scissors.

I don’t really feel old enough to be complaining about what I did “back in the day,” but I do feel like kids these days miss out on the true meaning of a family car trip. It’s real sibling bonding time. Any other time our parents would be yelling for us to “LEAVE EACH OTHER ALONE” but in the car you have no choice but to mess with each other. We’d start out by making faces at each other and inevitably there would be an invisible line drawn down the center of the car. One half belonging to me and the other half belonging to him. After about 15 minutes the line was forgotten and we were doing something else that eventually lead to the line being redrawn.

Technology is a wonderful thing. I know lots of parents now maintain their sanity on long car trips because their kids have Nintendo DS Lites and LeapFrog LeapPads, but I hope they still learn the car games of yore. My husband and I still enjoy singing along to music in the car! With one modification of course, it’s our iPod plugged into the car jack. Not a bright red, shiny cassette tape. 

I asked everyone in my office to name their favorite road trip game. Here’s our list:

• Road Sign Alphabet
• I Spy
• 20 Questions
• Hangman
• Tic Tac Toe
• Magnetic games like Checkers, Chess, and Backgammon       

What else can you come up with?