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Humor: The Horrors of Being a Carpool Driver

Sophie Steinberg

I’m a proud carpool mom of three. Each of my kids have very different personalities in the car. One of them grabs for the aux as soon as he gets into the car. He must be surrounded by his music at all times. What kills me, though, is that he loves country music. Billy Ray, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban — he listens to them all with gusto and integrity. He actually makes me listen to it but wears airpods listening to another song simultaneously. He likes to enjoy two songs at once for a complete country auditory immersion experience. He greets us with “yee haw” every morning, and then proceeds to snap the aux out of my hand. All I wanted was to listen to “Revisionist History” by Malcom Gladwell. Oh well. 

My second child, the one who sits on the left side of the back, constantly kicks my chair, screaming at the top of his lungs. It’s not the three hours of sleep that’s allowing me to be an attentive driver. No, it’s the yelling from this kid that keeps me awake and alert. The country music doesn’t even drown it out.

Finally my third and youngest child, at the right of the back, drains my money. She is obsessed with Starbucks. We go twice a day, to and from school, and she orders something different each trip. All the coffee in her system makes her shake wildly, and this in turn shakes the whole car. Once, as we neared the speaker by the drive-through, she asked me if I could order iced water with whipped cream. I told her no, but she started crying and had a panic attack, so I succumbed. My face turned the shade of a mango dragon fruit tea when I ordered it. 

Yes, my carpool kids are a handful (if you could imagine), but I love them to death. My Acura — blasting Keith Urban, carrying a shrieking child, and shaking due to my kicking kid and my coffee-addicted girl — is bound to need more shock absorbers and probably more effective sound-proof windows. But every morning and every afternoon, it’s me and my kids, my kids and I. 

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