Monday Memories

One day, when I was little, my dad surprised my mom with a new car. It was an Oldsmobile station wagon and it was long and yellow and wood paneled and my mom would call her Old Bessie when she drove it. This was the car of my youth and the car in which I learned to drive. We had that car forever. It was also the car that would take us on trips across the country. The back seat would lay down and my parents had a thick foam pad that fit perfectly in the space. We would cover it with blankets which turned the back of the car into the most comfortable little bed and this is where my brother and I would travel. No seat belts and no car seats. Just freedom. It was great when we were little, but it got a little cramped as we got taller. We didn't have portable electronics back then or TVs or anything fancy like that. Instead, we took a lot of naps and we entertained ourselves with coloring books and Mad Libs and those pictures that had magnetic shavings in them and you would drag the shavings around onto the face to give the face a beard and hair and whatnot.  I am sure it had a name, but I have no idea what it was. You know, good old imaginative stuff like that. I am also sure that we whined a lot and drove my parents crazy. But aside from all of that, the one thing that I really remember about those summer trips in the station wagon is that we would inevitably leave our crayons in the side cubby holes in the hot sun where they would melt into colorful puddles of wax. Always. Without fail. Then we would have to try and clean the wax out when the trip was over, cursing ourselves the whole time for ever putting the crayons in the cubby in the first place. Ahhh, the memories. Those were the days alright. However, I will take electronics for my kids' entertainment on trips any day.