Watermark Writers' Conference Humor Essay Contest
September 30, 2006
My brother, Randy, is four years younger than me, and was my backseat nemesis for every road trip. Sometimes we couldn’t even get to school without a staring, poking, whinefest. Vacations were particularly bad, since we always drove. Each summer, we took two weeks to travel from Decatur, Illinois to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Since we never had much money, most of our trip was spent ‘visiting relatives’, a euphemism for saving on motel bills by mooching off of aunts and uncles.
My dad was a Buick man and always had a Riviera or a Regal or some sedan that was the size of a cruise ship. Forty years ago, no one had ever heard of seatbelts, which meant that Randy and I got to roam up and down the back seat like feral cats. This gave us ample opportunity to sit in each other’s space, poke each other, and argue over nothing.
Looking back, I don’t know how our parents stayed sane for those two weeks.
Our favorite argument happened in Kentucky.
We were riding through the countryside on a modern two-lane highway (as we called it, the “hard road”), sitting on our own sides of the car and behaving fairly well. I looked at the beautiful Kentucky farms, with their white board fences and horses grazing peacefully and mused, “Someday I’m going to have a ranch, and I’ll have 100 horses on it.”
Randy said, “And I’ll come and work on your ranch and exercise your horses.”
And that’s all it took. I’m sure that, to my parents, it sounded like an offer to help, but I recognized it for what it was: a warning shot across my bow. Already he was guilty of following me around the house, standing in my room, horning in on every aspect of my life. I wouldn’t tolerate his interference in my ranch, not even my imaginary ranch.
“No, you’re not,” I admonished him. “I’m going to exercise my own horses.”
“You can’t exercise 100 horses,” he reasoned. “I have to help you.”
“No, you don’t. Not every horse needs to be ridden every day. Some of them can run around the pasture. Anyway, if I need help, I’ll hire people who know how to ride horses,” I told him, rather snottily.
“I can learn,” he shot back. “I want to ride your horses.”
“Well, you’re not going to. I’m going to exercise them, not you.”
We never had more than two or three intelligent exchanges before our debates were replaced with general bickering, followed by punching each other in the arm, then tattling to our mother. So, at this point, the argument degenerated into “Yes I am,” and, “No you’re not,” without a lot of point or counterpoint thrown in.
We went on like this for awhile, until my dad could not stand it anymore. My dad had a temper like an on/off switch; he would seem perfectly agreeable to a situation until he got suddenly fed up and exploded like a nuclear bomb. Mom, on the other hand, made our squabbles seem like pathological dramas (“I don’t know what’s wrong with you two; my brother and I never fought like you do”). Let’s just say that neither of them was good at conflict resolution.
“Both of you, shut up!” Dad shouted in a thunderous voice that hushed us immediately.
To end our argument, he added, “Randy! Get your own horse ranch!”
That we were arguing over a ranch that I did not own in a future that we had not seen was lost on us; his righteous anger spoiled our fun. We fell silent, then the moment wore off and we decided to play Slug-Bug, a game which is guaranteed to end in tears.
Now that I’m grown, our car trips are spent peacefully; my husband drives, I sleep and our son plays video games. Maybe Marcus doesn’t get to enjoy a backseat brawl, but at least I’m sane when we arrive.
