It's summer. And I have four kids. Kids who are going places. Mostly to the mall, but sometimes to work. Because two of those four have jobs at two different places across town from each other. The other two kids who don't have jobs have friends they want to go places with at two different places across town from each other. Did I mention, I have one kid with a driver's license and one with a driver's permit?
And we all share one car.
Sure, we have other cars. Two of which are undriveable. So, while some people have lawn decorations, we have driveway decorations. Just without the cinder blocks, but only because we have an HOA. The other vehicle is a manual transmission 1969 Karmann Ghia that seats two comfortably. If you're comfortable squished into a small black vinyl coupe seat that's ripped and the foam exposed with a lap seat belt whose only air conditioning is cranking the windows down. Which is the car my husband drives to work. I've thrown out a lot of numbers here, so let's take a moment to add them all up, shall we?
It sucks!
You're probably wondering why we don't just get rid of the two cars that don't work and get one that does. Which would be logical, obviously logic isn't part of the equation here. The plan is, if the boys invest sweat equity into one of the defunct vehicles (specifically the 1966 International Harvester, not the 1977 VW bus so my boys don't get profiled by the drug dogs at school), they get to share it at no charge. If they want their own car, they'll need to buy their own. Because we're old school like that. (If you could tell by the collection of old cars.) So now we're in this Catch-22 situation. They need a car to get to work. But they also need to work to get a car.
This is really inconvenient.
That's what one of my sons told me after I explained to him he couldn't drive the car to work because I needed it to get other kids other places so he'd have to call and we'd come pick him up from work. As if this inconvenience had somehow eluded me or something. It's moments like these that you just want to state the really blatantly obvious. You want to know what's inconvenient? Parenting is really inconvenient. And this is precisely why we're making our kids earn their cars, so they'll appreciate them. Hopefully, some day they'll appreciate the fact that they had old school parents too. But, probably not until they have their own inconvenient kids.
4 comments:
Good lesson for them to learn, and I would LOVE the Karmann Gia.
@joeh-Yeah, it's pretty sweet!
Well, everyone will get very good at shceduling things ahead of time... or else very good at walking everywhere. One or the other.
We had one car when I was a kid and wherever I am, I still am great at letting everyone know my schedule so we can coordinate.
Marie- like I've said before, it's like you are leading my double life! We have the exact same sitaution. Well, almost. We do have an extra car for the kids to drive. 2 with licenses, one with permit. Except this: It's an electric car. Which sounded great on paper, but it makes this car unreliable. i.e. if one has already driven it to work and sonic and god knows who all day, there is no more charge left for anything farther than 500 yards away. Then we have a convertible which is my husband's car which no one (not even me unless it's a dire need) gets to drive. The only car that has no constraints is my minivan, which no one WANTS to drive.
I think you might smile at this blog post that I wrote some time back about this whole situation: http://www.joburgexpat.com/2015/08/first-world-problem-how-to-spread-two.html
Oh, and I LOVE this line: "Parenting is really inconvenient." LOL! I will totally remember that one as a retort next time I hear grumbling. Which I'm sure will be very soon:)
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