Transportations the Issue by Konnie Enos

Growing up I was quite used to the idea of only one car per family. With only one parent there was no need for two cars. Then we went to live with our dad and his wife, though we still had only one car with two working parents and several kids in school. I’m thinking the only reason it worked was because it was a small town and their respective places of work were within walking distance of each other.

The point is, I don’t remember any long drawn out conversations about who had to be where when or who was able to do the driving to get whoever it was to where they needed to be.

Now forty years later I know of families which have multiple cars. At least both parents have their own and sometimes one or more of the children do too.

Admittedly there have been times when my husband and I had our own cars, like when we first got married. Which of course we needed since we both worked about 30 miles from our home and in opposite directions.

However most of our married life we’ve only had one vehicle at a time. When we’ve had two it was because Jerry needed one for work and I still needed to be able to get things done (like grocery shopping). But then most of the time we had two cars it was because neither one of them had enough seats for our whole family.

There were a couple of times where we had only one car and it was at least one, if not two seats shy of holding all of us. One of those times our only vehicle was a five passenger stick shift. We were a family of seven and I can’t drive a stick. I’m positive my husband got sick of it because he replaced it with a van fairly fast.

Currently we have a five passenger sedan.

Since only one of our children has moved out, we’re a family of six (not counting fur and feather babies).

Now this in and of itself isn’t bad because we don’t really all go someplace together. In fact I can only think of a couple of times we’ve had more than three people in the car and maybe one of those did we have five.

So no, we don’t have a problem trying to figure out how to get all of us someplace at the same time simply because it just doesn’t happen.

What we do have an issue with is figuring out who needs to be where when and who exactly is available to do the driving.

The real fun part is when one child needs to be at point A on the hour and another child needs to be at point B (clear across town) on the half hour. It’s at least a half hour drive without traffic. There is always traffic, especially when we’re rushed/in a hurry.

Seriously. It comes down to, “This trip will take this much time and this one will take this much time, so the overlap means someone has to drop off/pick up people for several hours straight.” I’ve mentioned my being in the car for hours on end before.

Recently however, getting one child to her doctor’s appointments would require the car being unavailable to other members of the family for several days.

One child was totally not inconvenienced by the prospect.

The other two were like, “Wait! What? How am I supposed to (insert whatever they would need to get to or from in that time period).”

My son finally decided his best option was staying with a friend for those few days.

My daughter railed, fought and argued about it until she finally pointed out we had not two, but three drivers in the family. She then offered a solution which didn’t leave her stranded or the family without a driver or vehicle. (Jerry does have a truck, but he’s the only who can drive it.)

Her solution may have solved her transportation issue but it created another problem.

Now we have to leave our fur babies in the care of my husband and our youngest son. I’m thinking we will have to be calling them at least twice a day to remind them to get food and water to the poor things. Maybe more than that because the dogs will need let out and the cat’s litter box will need cleaned.

Yeah, it’s going to be an interesting trip.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.