I-95: I Am Your Pupil

Last Friday five of my children and I spent basically an entire day inside the confines of our Suburban.  (Berg was the missing Keiglet.  He’s spending another Boys Only visit with Aunt Emma & Co.)

It was a very long day.  (Can you say that sentence slowly and with emphasis and while heaving a heavy sigh?)

But the trip was not in vain.  (Well, of course it was not in vain.  We needed to get from Tallahassee to South Carolina and our choice was to live in Florida forever or to drive home.)

This is what Florida to South Carolina on I-95 taught me.

1.  Sean Kingston and Justin Bieber’s ridiculous little ditty actually says, “Shorty is a eenie meenie miney mo lova’”.  I thought that was a joke lyric.  How could anyone (two anyones, apparently – it is a duet after all) pen that lyric and call it a successful day of writing?    Shorty?  What does that even mean?

2.  Shorty can have more than one definition.  Not only does it mean the obvious – a person of smaller stature – but it also has an acquired meaning of an attractive female.

3.  Otto Fox likes a rhythm.  Whenever the bass was thumpin’ (yeah – I can swing some slang too, okay?), Otto’s legs were pumpin’.

4.  Mosely still cries when she loses a balloon.

5.  Chick-fil-A chicken strips are good, possibly even better than the classic sandwich on whole wheat that I have been ordering religiously for the past ten years.

6.  Every Chick-fil-A restaurant does not feature matching playgrounds.

7.  It is possible to grow tired of eating at Chick-fil-A.

8.  London still possesses an insatiable appetite.  (Evidenced by the thirty billion times she asked for food.)

9.  When the children are given a choice of song to listen to Piper will always choose “Downtown” from Little Shop of Horrors and Mosely will always request “any song by the Jingle Twins“.

10.  Driving makes me very sleepy.  Dangerously sleepy.

11.  Traveling in tandem with Emma makes it much easier to change lanes as she serves as my left lane traffic controller.

12.  There is absolutely nothing of interest on the entire route from Jacksonville to Columbia.  Not even an interesting billboard.  (Although Emma insists that she saw an interesting bird perched on a billboard but I hardly think that counts.)

13.  Riley likes to sleep a lot.  Text a bunch.  And listen to her iPod.  (Ahhh.  I remember when it was not my job to stay awake and navigate a family safely from Point A to Point B.  When I could sleep.  Or listen to my mix tapes on my Walkman until the batteries slowly died and made Rick Astley’s voice barely intelligible.)

14.  Watermelon is not a travel-friendly snack.

15.  iPod batteries are not eternal.

16.  London is actually genuine competition at the alphabet game.

17.  But Piper is just distracting.  (“Z!  I see a Z on that car.  P for Piper.  S.  S.  S.”)

18.  Mosely calls the need to throw up “throw upping”.  Mosely claimed the need for “throw upping” fourteen times.  But she never followed through.  I think she just wanted to get out of the car.  I can’t blame her.  If I thought I could escape the drive by throw upping, I think I would have too.

19.  Our children can no longer attend college.  Not one of them.  I poured their entire tuition (inflation factored in) into our gas tank.

20.  My future grandchildren are already named.  London plans to name her son Little Joe.  Piper wants a boy  we can call Chuck E. Cheese.  Mosely will christen her first born The Pirate Who Won’t Do Anything.  Or Bob.

21.  Cruise control is my friend.

22.  If a drink is on sale at a gas station for a quarter then you should know there is probably a reason that drink is on sale at a gas station for a quarter.  Green sour apple FizzEd tastes exactly like it sounds.

23.  Only one restaurant can be counted on to appear every twenty miles.  Waffle House.   And sometimes you are left with no choice but to eat in the sticky, sketchy establishment because you miss the exit for IHOP and the Moe’s you saw advertised on the billboard does not really exist on exit 102.  And when you are at the Waffle House you must listen to the Waffle House song.  And if you are traveling with your sixteen-year-old daughter you might have to listen to an N-Sync song as well.

Oh I-95.  I hope I have graduated with honors from your academy.