Road Trips: Fart Jokes Trump Natural Beauty
By: Keith
Here we are, traveling through a spectacularly beautiful part of the United States, and all my boys want to do is watch movies, play Nintendo and tell fart jokes. The road trips of my youth were nothing like kids experience today (I know this is starting to sound like an uphill to school in the snow sort of story, but I swear it’s not. Bear with me). Today we sit in these ultra comfortable SUVs with all kinds of wired entertainment. Gone are the days of just looking out the window wondering what cowboys there might still be out on the horizon riding around. We just passed Bryce Canyon, and I’m sitting here on my laptop writing. It’s certainly not like the kids are the only ones lured by the technology. So what do you do when there’s pretty stuff outside and your kids are watching Tom and Jerry in the back seats? Easy, man. You just shut it all off.
Unplug:
To my credit, I stayed off the computer today until the sun went down; I didn’t really miss anything. And neither did the kids. I shut off, against massive public outrage, their electronic entertainment at Arches National Park, and it remained off all the way through Goblin Valley, Escalante, and Bryce Canyon. Now that it’s dark and there’s nothing to see, and I’m sitting here writing, they’re in back playing their GameCube. I think that’s fair, nighttime they get the games until they fall asleep (we’ll eventually stop at a hotel). However, in lieu of watching TV I got to learn some interesting things about the power of farts. Por Ejemplo:
Several Things Super Farts are Capable of (according to a 5 and 7 year old)
- “See that tunnel? A Super Fart made it.”
- “I’ll bet you could mine for gold with a Superfart.”
- “Paul Bunyan made Bryce Canyon with a Super Fart.”
- “The top of that mountain got blown away with a Super Fart.” (In reference to a Butt – seriously, the humor of that was lost on them).
- “I shot myself into space last week with a Super Fart.”
- “I’ll bet even though I’m smaller I could make a more super fart than Mom.” (Please don’t try in the car!)
- “Super farts were invented by Leonardo Da Vinci.”
- “Your Birthday is Next week, Alan! Want me to get you a Super Fart?”
Anyway, it went on like that for at least an hour. The one small consolation I get out of it is that Neil knew who Leonardo Da Vinci was. I also feel good that they’re at least flexing their creative strength instead of just mindlessly watching a movie. There’s a place for most things in our modern world, but we shouldn’t forget the magic of road trips. It really should be about spending quality time together even if that quality time devolves into telling fart jokes. By the way, I got a speeding ticket today for going 75 in a 65. I haven’t had a speeding ticket in the last 12 years. I pulled away after getting the ticket and Alan asked me “Why didn’t you get sent to jail?” “Well, kid, thanks for the show of support.”
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HAHAHAHA! Oh, so sorry about your ticket.
jajajajaaj, muy buena la historia, me encanta me hace recordar que cuando viajabamos solo veiamos estrellas y alguno que otro accidente pero era padre salir a carretera sin tantos adelantos tecnologicos y bueno no hablar de las quedadas por alguna falla mecánica, pues me da gusto que los niños puedan gozar de la maravillosa naturaleza!
saluditos los queremos
MIA & DAphne
We do four hour (each way) road trips about once every six weeks to visit my parents, and while we have a VCR (we rock it OLD SCHOOL) we don’t always play it. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s road trip bingo (make a grid with signs and stuff they’ll see on a highway), and sometimes it’s just playing with their toys (my kids are younger than yours at 19 months and five years, so playing together isn’t really an option yet).
Sorry about the ticket… isn’t 10mph over a little tight? Or is that where they set the radar? (In Ontario it’s 20km/h over the limit… so you go 117 in a 100 and you don’t get caught.)
.-= SciFi Dad´s last blog ..Open Letters From April 2010 =-.
Wow– those are cool pictures. I personally prefer the natural beauty over fart jokes.
My kids are teenagers and they were just starting to put movie players in cars. I was the mean mom holdout. They were limited to an hour a day of television, so I couldn’t very well add video to the car.
We would play the license plate game, and punch buggy, and eye spy. Although the eye spy had to move pretty quickly or we’d lose sight of what we spied.
And we’d talk about serious subjects like, “If the 4th of July is the birth of our country, how come we don’t have birthday cake?” and “Why doesn’t the president just tell everyone to stop fighting?” and “Stop hitting your sister!”
Aahhhh, memories.
.-= Debbie Lattuga´s last blog ..Foto Friday – Baseball =-.
Fantastic pictures,and I hope you enjoyed your road trips.