Road Trippin' with Mom

I recently spent the better part of four days (including the longest day of the year) in a car with my mother. Some observations:

• My mother knows exactly two words from every song played on the XM 70's channel. Unfortunately, she knows neither the exact placement of these words in the lyrics of the song, nor the key in which they should be sung. This does not prevent her, however, from belting out the two words repeatedly throughout the course of the entire song. I can only partially replicate the effect here, but imagine the pleasures of hearing these words over and over in a 3-4 minute interval: "Baby baby!" "Burn baby burn!" "Hot stuff!" "Money money money money!" [This last accompanied by what I can only presume are my mother's approximations of how Donald Trump dances when sitting in a car seat.] At one surreal moment, the two words my mother knew were "desolation row."

• My mother has mastered the dubious art of non-sequiter conversation non-starters. Some examples: "When I get home, I'm going to start stocking up on canned peas"and "Goodbye, trees!" and "There's not much to look at here" (stated while driving through Nevada) and "I like to eat a handful of nuts everyday" and etc.

• My mother seemed OK with the idea of me driving at speeds above and beyond the posted limit, but had a very difficult time with any lateral motion of the vehicle (i.e., passing). Whenever I changed lanes to get around a tractor trailer or (more often) a Utah driver, she would let out a gasp of clenched air while clutching for dear life to the nearest handle or seat or belt. At first, this behaviour was rather distracting and somewhat annoying, but it later became quite a source of amusement for me, much like spitting on an anthill or hiding candy from children. (What can I say? It was a long drive.)

• Items my mother felt were necessary to bring on the drive from Utah to California: 1 roll of paper towels, 1 can of mixed nuts, 6 oranges, 4 peaches, 1 bunch of grapes, 4 bananas, 2 coolers filled with ice, 4 Lunchable Snack Packs, 4 bottles of water, 3 cans of diet soda, 1 pack of gum, 1 can of Pringles (imprinted with trivia questions), and a leftover dinner salad in a styrofoam container. No chance of starvation or scurvy on this voyage, then.

• My mother should not be allowed to handle, dispense, or carry cash money. During brief stops at places with gambling machines, she could not walk past any row of them without "playing" at least $5. If the machine did not accept her bill, she would add bills of consecutively higher face value until one was accepted. As far as I was able to calculate, her total winnings during these gaming intermissions amounted to exactly $0.00. On my birthday, she felt absolutely certain that I needed to have a refrigerator magnet advertising the name of the casino we had stopped at in order to use the washroom facilities (cost of magnet: $2.95). Needless to say, I expect no inheritance whatsoever.

• My mother has a confused concept of interstate travel. While driving on California's I-5, I made the tactical error of telling her we would be passing through Medford, Oregon. When she started seeing exit signs for Medford, she kept looking at me expectantly. "Aren't we supposed to be going through Medford?" she would ask. "Why aren't we going to Medford?" I briefly toyed with the idea of leaving her in Medford forever, but my better nature prevailed.

• It's difficult to be an aggressive driver when one's mother is in the passenger seat. I found myself driving at uncharacterisitically safe speeds, waving hands instead of fingers at my fellow travellers, and scrambing to create less profane ways of expressing my frustration with the incompetent drivers surrouding me. Suprisingly, I eventually found this mode of travel rather relaxing. I felt free, like in that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer paints wider lanes on the road.

There are few better ways of getting to know a person than to spend a few days in a moving vehicle together. Though I can't say the journey was entirely relaxing, I at least had the comfort of knowing that, had I not gone with her, my mother would have attempted the journey alone, at the mercy of far less forgiving souls than mine. There was also the added advantage of knowing that the final stage of the journey, from her home to mine, would be made with only a loud stereo as my companion. Safe at last.