While her baby needs assistance when driving, my baby is a solo cruiser looking for the older ladeez. "Beep, beep, be back to pick you up later!"
Before baby was born, I wondered about the family car passenger arrangement that occurs when you have a child, the one where a parent is in the front seat driving and the other is in the back with baby. I liked the idea of being chauffeured around by my husband but didn’t realize the challenges that were bundled behind the driver’s seat. Most trips are short distances and the entertainment necessary to get baby from point A to point B becomes a rapid series of offerings to the tot within a brief period of time. Kinda like a blackjack dealer at a losing table. Longer distance trips revolve around nap times and when baby finally nods off, I hold my breath over each railroad track, pothole and Scorpions song turned up to 11 by the daddy driver. I eagerly grab the NY Times magazine from a week ago (because I never get to read anything all of the way through anymore) and steal a few precious moments of quiet cerebral entertainment. I sink into this coveted space only to be jolted back to reality because daddy has bad 80’s rock blaring. Although I request that the music be put on the front speakers only, I might as well be inside the woofer. He tries to draw me in to his one man party while looking at me in the rearview mirror with eyebrows raised above his sunglasses and singing in exaggerated falsettos. He yells out quips and quizzes (“Hey, did I tell you about Aerosmith? You know they would get completely messed up at their concerts and play the same songs at every show and decided to mix it up a bit by playing the last song first and the first song last and when Steven Tyler sang the opening song, he said goodnight to the crowd and left the stage. He was so trashed he thought it was the last song of the show!”) He tries to engage me, talking over the music and I wrestle with the desire to be in the front seat next to him like it was before baby came along and the desire to shut out the world for a minute so I can read a paragraph uninterrupted. Seems all, if any, of the free time I manage to carve out of a day undergoes tough scrutiny about how it should be divvied up. Should I file my haggard fingernails, should I nestle with hubby, should I go for a walk, or just hide and sit in silence? Unfortunately, none of those options are ever elected and I go, instead, to unload the dishwasher. It's stupid, really.
And now for a "baby on the road" pictoral...
"Do I really have to wear these sunglasses, mom?"
"Hot wire...now what does that mean?"
"Hey, who's that crazy looking kid in that little box thing?"
"He's kinda handsome..."
"Oh wait! That's me. Yup. I'm pretty cool."
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