Don't Make Me Turn This Car Around.....................

If you were ever a child then chances are you probably had at least one family road trip. If you weren't ever a child then please say hello to the mother ship for me and I hope you've come in peace.

Growing up with a mother from Virginia who had a twin in California we spent many summers on the road to visit her side of the family.

Adventures were to be had on every trip and the memories made were of course priceless. I will say that I am very lucky to have been able to have so many adventures as a kid. Mom and dad certainly did their best to take us kids to some really amazing places along the way that without them I would not even realize existed.

This post however is not about those adventures. This is about the time between the destinations..... the car...........

Family car trips generally started the same each time. Mom would wake us all up at the crack of 3 AM and we would all trudge to the car fully dressed because none of us bothered to put on pjs knowing what was coming the next day. In tow we would also have our pillows and blankets and something to entertain ourselves. That something was generally a toy or book and by day two in the car it was used mainly to hit other siblings with. I preferred books myself as they caused more damage to the other siblings.

Now six children attempting to sleep in the back of a Dodge Caravan required a Tetris like skill by mom to determine who sat where and how we slept. Our baby sister Danielle was only a small child so she sat on moms lap when she was awake and when she needed to sleep she slept on a tiny cradle mattress by the sliding door in the car. Safety first! I don't think we even had a car seat in the car with her on trips.....ever.

My older brother Jeremy would lay in the very back on top of bags and blankets. That was his precious area that none of us were allowed to invade. My baby brother Charlie however, managed to invade it from the front of the van with a slight flick of his wrist.

It had grown quite late and Jeremy had made his way back to his nest to sleep and was undoubtedly slumbering soundly. Once again, our family motto of safety first meant that Charlie who was about three at the time was wandering the front of the van between mom and dads seats. He reached up and began to fiddle with the radio which dad had turned down so low that it may have well been turned off. Charlie twisted the volume knob all the way with one swoop and at the same moment Jeremy, who's ear had been resting directly against a speaker, shot straight up, flat as a rail, and almost seemed to hit the roof of the van.
As his younger sister who he relentlessly pestered I found great satisfaction in seeing that happen and chuckled to myself. Dad shut off the radio and we all settled back down.

While on a different trip sharing the back seat with my baby sister Danielle who was probably seven or eight we had determined that just stretching out end to end would be the most comfortable way to sleep. I awoke to her snuggling my foot like a teddy bear and kissing it. Awkward to say the least. Being the good sister that I am, I remind her of that often. I mean, what kind of sister would I be if I let her forget such a precious memory?

Gross things happen on car trips, like really gross things, things we shouldn't talk about and yet I am gonna talk about them. I am a rebel like that.

Imagine if you will a place where smells collide one siblings odor to another and three days of funk permeates the air. Only the occasional stop for gas would allow us to sponge ourselves off in the bathroom. That is a task that few young children will do willingly or without having to be reminded. Things got pretty funky in the car for sure. The small two inch gap that the rear windows angled opened to was sheer heaven if you were lucky enough to sit by a window that you could put your face by.

After a particularly badly needed rest stop we were all in good form and we had all made a quick change of clothes since we would be arriving at Grandma and Grandpas house that evening. We wanted to look as good as you possibly could after traveling three days by car without stopping. As you can imagine we all arrived pretty haggard looking. But I digress. We had just made our stop and mom had grabbed a few drinks for us kids to go with our homemade sandwiches that she made us. Charlie grabbed his drink of orange juice and guzzled it rather quickly. It was quite a large drink for such a small three year old. Do you know what happens when you put 12 ounces of juice in a 6 ounce package and add a dose of shaking car to the mix? Yep, you guessed it. Tragedy!

Charlie leaned over moms shoulder and began to announce that he didn't feel good. What came out was "Mom, I don't feel very bleeeehhhhhhhhhh............." Poor mom! Covered now in stomach acid rendered orange juice and all she could muster was "Lovely, it's in my garments." Dad stopped as soon as he could for her to change again but the smell permeated the car the rest of the night. Charlie was forced to hold a garbage bag the rest of the way as well just in case he needed to open the floodgates again. Needless to say when we arrived we were all very grateful to get out of that van.

On a subsequent trip it was dad that grossed both me and Danielle out. Sitting directly behind him with Danielle next to me. Everyone was in a pretty decent mood. No children had been threatened to be "left in Kansas and picked up on the way back" if we didn't knock it of so things were going well. Dad was just driving along and sneezed into his hand and of course wiping it on his jeans would have been just gross so he instead wiped it down the back of his head. I glanced up and immediately my gag reflex took over. I tried to say Mom but it just wouldn't come out past Mo ugh Mo ugh Mo ugh. I tapped Danielle and pointed and she then saw the horror of what I was seeing. The big grey green booger in the back of his hair, and I mean BIG. She yelled out "Gross!!! Mom, dad has a giant booger in his hair!" Mom looked and all she could say was "Oh Rodney!", then handed him a napkin to wipe it out. Thinking back on that now still triggers my gag reflex.

On one particularly awesome trip to California I managed to get the worst sunburn of my life. I was ten and we had spent a fantastic day at the beach with my mothers twin and I ended up with blisters the size of quarters covering my back and down the back of my legs. It was incredibly painful. There was no way that I would have been able to sit on the ride home so I was grateful that this trip only had me and my two younger siblings in the back. Charlie was five and Danielle was three. I was laying face down on the center seat in the van. My back and legs were covered with burn cream and gauze. I was in quite a bit of pain and in that haze I didn't notice that my little brother was playing on the back of the seat and laying across it. All it took was one slight tap of the brakes and Charlie landed right on my back popping the majority of my blisters. I thought I was in agony before but I was quickly schooled on what real pain was. I screamed out and broke into tears instantly as the pain hit me and it was only worsened as he moved and scrambled across my tender skin to get off of me. I just sobbed and sobbed in pain. Dad found a rest stop and mom took me into the ladies room and ever so gently yanked the gauze off my back as quickly as she could. I almost fainted with that pain that caused. She did her best to cover the now open blisters on my back with petroleum jelly and once again covered me in gauze. Charlie was terrified to go near me the remainder of the trip. I hope you all see now why I tried to drown him in the last post.

So while this post is not quite as hilarious as my previous posts, I wanted to talk about my nightmares and get them out. After all, 9 out of 10 counselors say that talking about trauma helps you forget it.....

Living life in Neutral Five

So there I was, perched at the top of the hill overlooking Twin Lakes....


Wait, wait, wait... back up. We need to start at the beginning.

Growing up I was lucky enough to live less than a mile from Twin Lakes in Clifton Idaho. This quaint little reservoir was surrounded by gentle rolling hills on all sides. Which I might add are very fun to play on with motorcycles and four wheelers going up and around the burms created by other riders.

It was actually quite rare that we hit the lake as a family although many of us went on our own or with our ward youth groups. On this particular occasion we packed all us kids into the car with our cousins Jamie and Stacey and Erin and Aunt Tracey and headed to the lake.

It was sheer pandemonium as the water was invaded and screaming peals of delight from happy kids ensued while the beginnings of sunburns took hold. After a few hours boredom sets in when your mother has repeatedly yelled at you to not drown your sibling. You realize that no matter how hard you try you just can't get them to drown without splashing and drawing her attention. So for yet another day Charlie would live.

Since drowning Charlie was now off the docket, my older brother Jeremy and I decided to climb the rolling hill directly behind where we were enjoying our lake time and see what our house looked like from up there. Apparently in our mind this would be a grand adventure and surely our house would look like a tiny little speck from the top of that miniature Everest.

Off we headed and up we climbed, our feet slipping and sliding in the soft sand and weaving our way around the cactus plants and sagebrush till finally our ascent brought us to the peak of that massive ridge. Okay it was really more like a bald mans head halfway buried and not that much of a ridge at all. We stared down at our house, which for the record looks exactly the same from that peak as it does from a mile down the road from our driveway.

After that giant let down of a view and precious energy spent to climb that hill my brother decided to head back down. As he started walking he told me that when I come down to make sure I walk sideways.
AS IF!!!  Why on earth would I ever take advice from him? I was certain that he was just trying to make me look like a fool when I decided to come down and that he would laugh at me. If there was one thing I knew for sure it was that he could not be trusted. I had been locked in enough closets and been given enough wedgies by him to know that was the most sure thing. Never trust Jeremy ran right through my mind.

By the time I determined that I would head down he was about a third of the way down the hill so I just set forth one foot in front of the other, clomping each foot down, facing forward. Wow I was amazed how easy going down was and I was making great time! Like really great time! Hell, I was running! Oh crap I was running and I couldn't stop! Like a blur I whizzed past him trying to grab his arm and ending up only with a large portion of his skin under my fingernails as my hand tore into his arm in an effort to stop. It failed.

What I succeeded in doing was throwing myself off balance and now instead of running I was tumbling and sliding, end over end, cactus after cactus. It was at this time I could hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs in fear. Turns out that was me. My bruised and scraped body came to a stop at the bottom of the hill with one final slide into home that would make a professional baseball player proud. My thigh looked like hamburger and blood and dirt covered me.

From somewhere in the distance I heard my five year old brother Charlie scream out, "Wow! Did you see that! She came down that hill in NEUTRAL FIVE!!!!"

My ego was as badly bruised and as bloody as my leg. Jeremy made it down yelling, " You moron! I told you to walk sideways!" He actually had the nerve to say it like he had earned the right to be trusted!
"Shut up Jeremy", was all I could muster. Mom ran to me and as tenderly as she could she advised me to go sit in the lake. You know, she just wanted to make sure every possible bacteria and germ had its equal chance to enter my raw and chewed up thigh. Like a moron I sat in the lake as they packed up the stuff and we got into the car to head home and treat my wounds.

We arrived home and mom said, "Go run a warm bath and put baking soda in it with you and soak for a few minutes to get it clean". I followed her instructions and did just that. I found out years later that while I was nursing my wounds they sat in the car and laughed at me for quite some time.

Go figure, for some strange reason this nasty wound which covered then entire right side of my thigh got nice and infected and I wound up at the doctors office having it scrubbed and having gravel, yes gravel removed from it. Ouch again. I am very lucky not to have a scar on my leg from that incident but I will tell you this, I have learned that I can go through life in NEUTRAL FIVE and survive!!!

Neutral Five has now become a family saying to remind us to slow the hell down when we start acting out of control and patent is pending on the phrase. Okay not really but maybe I will look into patenting it.