For this current trip down memory highway, I looked forward to enjoying some of these experiences with my children. I thought this trip would be a chance to relive a simpler time, but those 1,200 miles aren’t what they used to be.
Companionship and shared experience have been replaced by individual desires and personal technology. I knew I’d have to combine the old with the new. I made speeches about library books, but also borrowed a two-screen DVD player. What I didn’t realize was just how much technology was packed already.
Aside from the DVD player, we had two computers, three MP3 players and three cell phones, which meant we connected to a lot more than the scenery. Gone are the days of marveling at a new bridge or cheering as governors welcome us to their states via big border signs. Instead we had daily “tech checks” to make sure everything was charged. There were so many cords traversing the minivan, it looked like a fully equipped kidney-dialysis unit.
We even added GPS to my son’s cell phone (even though our position was I-95 from start to finish). That meant we had the voices of “Kelly” and “Robert” with us at every turn. If we tired of Kelly’s too-seductive voice telling us to “prepare to turn left,” Robert would encourage us to “prepare to turn right.”
Although I brought along the fat AAA Tour Books, I used them only to prop up the computer on my lap. We didn’t need them because the GPS was able to pinpoint nearby franchise restaurants, guiding us into the same Mexican chain for the same quesadilla we’d eaten three states ago.
When I was the designated driver, my headphone-wearing husband and daughter would burst into laughter during choice moments of their movie, while my ear-budded son would randomly sing out, “Ain’t no mountain high enough … "
“Anyone want a cookie?” I would ask. No answer. “Hey, look! There’s a real cotton field, right off the highway!” No response. “Wanna stop in Georgia for pecan logs?” Silence. A traffic jam caused by an overturned truck filled with uranium got most of the family to look up. I guess it takes a nuclear threat to get a preteen’s attention.
For much of the vacation drive time, I was in my own virtual reality. I had no one to talk to, no one to share whatever meager experiences I-95 had to offer. I tuned in to some scratchy country-music stations and empathized with their loneliness. I yearned for the old days in my mama’s Buick station wagon, rolling around the back hills of suburbia.
Then, only 10 miles from our destination, our daughter got inexplicably tangled in her seat belt. She was uncomfortable and starting to panic. The computer and MP3 players couldn’t help.
Luckily, before I left New Jersey I had packed an old-fashioned emergency kit. It had a white rag (the pre-cell-phone distress call), matches, canned food and just what I needed, a pair of scissors. I cut the seat belt tangled around my daughter’s waist and released her from her misery. The scissors may have been low on the tech scale, but they were just the right tool for the job, once we climbed over all the gizmos and gadgets to get to our daughter in the back row of seats.
In our quest to be tuned in at all times, I hope we don’t tune out some of the basic things that have kept us going for generations—things like simple tools, a Sunday drive, everyone singing the same song in the car. I hope we can occasionally “single-task” as passengers and just look out the window, perhaps offering the occasional comment. Spotted cows, retro cars and even rainbows may be just around the next bend in the road.
