Hollywood seems to be banking on remakes and sequels lately.  Anyone who goes to the movies will see posters for a myriad of sequels and remakes that look to be pretty awful.  What isn’t in the works for a remake, at least as far as I can tell, is the original Vacation movie starring Chevy Chase.  Granted, some studio rolled out Meet the Miller’s or Were the Miller’s with Jennifer Anniston and Jason Sedakis about a road trip, but it was loosely based on the original vacation concept and they traveled in a luxury RV.  Part of the reason a studio couldn’t remake Vacation is because it isn’t plausible.  No one wold believe that a family would load up in their station wagon and travel from Chicago to Southern California, it’s just not plausible.

I’ve mentioned before that part of me wants to put my kids through all of the miserable shit I had to endure as a child as a “character building” exercise.  However, one thing I wouldn’t want to put my kids through is any of the vacations that I went on as a kid.  Not because they don’t deserve to be put through the misery that I suffered through on multiple road trips to Colorado, Maine, and Florida, but because I would absolutely loose my mind if I were to attempt to replicate the trips my parent’s took me on as a child.

My first trip involved a Ford F-150 and a truck bed camper.  My mom, dad, my brother and I took my grandparents truck and camper out to Maine.  My brother and I rode in the back of the truce bed in the camper for most of the trip.  Two things still stand out to me from that trip, first of all my mom made us go to Amish Acres before we made our way out east. Amish Acres is located in northern Indiana and it’s as awful as it sounds, my mom would have been better off just watching the movie Witness (Harrison Ford has to live with a bunch of Amish people because some Amish kid witnessed a murder) instead of wasting our time forcing us to go hang out with Amish people.

The second memory from the trip was waking up in the morning in the parking lot of a McDonalds and having to pee really bad.  Unfortunately, my parents locked us in the trailer so we wouldn’t fall out while they were driving, I think they were worried that we would jump out while they were driving just to escape the misery of the trip, in hindsight it probably would have been worth the risk of injury.  My only option was to empty the contents of my bladder into red solo cups, I believe I filled up three solo cups while my parent’s were inside chowing down on Egg McMuffins, selfish jerks.

Things were definitely different back then, pretty sure I would never allow my kids to ride in a truck camper while I drove down the rode.  On top of that I would never agree to take a trip to Maine in a camper that was the size of a truck bed. The four of us somehow managed to sleep in that camper, I can’t imagine trying to do the same with my family.

We also took a Honda Civic wagon out to Colorado when I was ten and my brother was two.  My most vivid memory from that misadventure was stopping at a rest stop in Iowa on our way back to Michigan.  My brother had a complete meltdown, likely do to consuming a weekly recommended amount of sugar in the span of an hour, and ripped off his diaper while in the back of the station wagon.  He was inconsolable and entirely spastic, the patrons at the rest stop thought my parents were abusing him based upon the way he was acting.  I had no idea that that particular incident was a sign of things to come and that behaviorally my brother was only going to decline from that point on.

The final major road trip we took, at least that I was forced to be a part of, was to Florida and we drove on that one as well in my grandparents Cadillac Seville.  The reason we had to use my grandparents car is because we owned a chevy citation that was a four speed with rusted out floorboards that allowed water to seep in when you drove over large puddles and a Ford Grenada that was a three speed that went 0-60 in a roughly 40 seconds.

While it would be difficult to find the actual vehicles we took on these vacations in order to replicate the trips exactly as they had occurred.  However, what would be even more difficult is to not allow our children to watch movies on these trips.  I’m not sure what we did back then to pass the time while in the car traveling, but we weren’t watching movies, I’d like to think I read books, but I highly doubt that was the case.  As inconceivable as it is to imagine loading up a station wagon and traveling across country, imagine doing it without the benefit of DVD players, smart phones, and todays modern vehicles.

The crazy thing is that we are much better equipped to travel by car with what we have at our disposal, but even the thought of doing brings about immediate anxiety.  On top of that, if we had driven down to Florida for the trip we are currently on, we probably would have never left because we would’t have had a specific departure time that we needed to leave by.  The reality is that if I had to travel with my kids in a 1986 Honda Civic Wagon all the way to Colorado without today’s technology, they would have been “accidentally” left at a rest stop somewhere outside of Chicago.

However, if we owned a mini van traveling across country could be plausible, I still probably wouldn’t do it, but it would be a possibility.  We currently have a Dodge caravan as our rental and it is something to behold.  I have vowed to not purchase a mini van because in my mind it means that I have finally waived the white flag and given up on life.  However, I am now open to the idea of Shirley driving one so that I can avail myself of it’s many benefits.  First of all, instead of having to bring our portable dvd players and all the corresponding power cords you merely load your dvd into the player in the front of the car and whalaa your kids are immediately calmed down and entertained.  It also has automatic doors and third row seating that is easily accessible and comfortable.  Currently, in Shirley’s crossover the only person I’m willing to put in the third row seating is my mother in law.  One of the many great things about having two kids, as opposed to three, is that there are two doors on a minivan so they each have their own door to shut by pushing the button, not sure what we would do if we had another kid, I guess we could just send them to the back of the van and have them shut the tailgate but that would be kind of a pain in the ass.  Not sure how people made it back in the day when minivans only had one door, that must have been a trying time in history for parents.

This leads me to my latest stroke of genius when it comes to parenting and on elf the things I would likely need to implement if I was to survive any type of lengthy road trip with my family.  Any of you parents out there feel free to try this one if your kids are fighting over something.  Currently if my kids are fighting over something I tell them we are going to do eennie meenie minie moe to determine who gets to choose what they want.  This works out great because I can rig it to make sure whichever one of my kids is being the biggest dick doesn’t win.  On top of that, they love the playing the game, and to my surprise are always content with the outcome.  “And you are not it!”  If they had a parenting hall of fame and the induction criteria wasn’t based upon your entire body of parenting work but merely on one event, I’m pretty sure this moment of brilliance would have punched my ticket to Cooperstown (that’s where the baseball hall of fame is, may as well put my imaginary parenting hall of fame there as well).