The Terror of the Tweet

I’m mentioned approximately 6 million times we are on a road trip.

Road trips make me happy.

In fact, the time since our move has progressed amazingly slow without the opportunity to get in the vehicle, point our noses toward the wild blue yonder, and drive and drive and drive.

I never thought I would miss Nebraska, the land of grouchy police officers and people who believe red Huskers sweatshirts are haute couture, but I do. Because soccer happened in Nebraska and we road tripped for soccer.

But wait! Before I walk too far down memory lane I need to stop and remind everyone we went on a road trip this weekend! 8.5 hours of road tripping in a sedan where the kids were justthisclose!

Good family bonding. Or torture. Your call, changed by the minute.

The kids were quite excited to get out of the house and go on the road trip. In fact, I almost wet my pants with laughter after listening to what they talked about (toilets not being convenient items on a road trip unless you’re in a Winnebago.)

(I want a Winnebago in the worst way.)

We hit the road and Uno began lecturing Tres on the joys of the road trip. Tres didn’t care. It was their normal bedtime and she was locked in the seat, blanket clutched to her cheek and thumb firmly inserted in her mouth. Down for the count.

Uno recognized she wasn’t getting a response from Tres and turned her attention to Dos.

“We might see an elk,” Uno says. “Deer are really big but elk are really bigger and we might see one.”

“Really?” Dos was suitably impressed.

“Oh, yes. if their legs are spreaded together it’s an elk. If they’re spreaded apart it’s a deer,” Uno instructed.

I had a vision of a bunch of large bovine mammals at a tea party, trying to hold teacups with hooves and wearing straw hats.

Everyone wants the elk at a tea party, as they have the good manners to hold their haunches in tightly closed submission…

But the deer! Oh, if you invite a deer to the tea party they sprawl out there like they fortified their tea with whiskey, all their personal junk just hanging out in the open for God and everyone to see.

It’s just awkward, I mean, where do you look if you’ve got a deer at the tea party?

Flight of fancy gone, I kept my chuckle to myself. Uno and Dos moved on to a deep theological discussion about whether turtles go to heaven and if they do, what about the toaster?

Yep, it was that random.

The road clicked by, the conversation switched topics many times, so I began writing the true gems down and tweeting them to my indulgent followers.

Uno told Dos she’d kissed a boy. Knocked him down to the ground, sat on his stomach and just kissed the heck out of him. (She was almost 2-years-old at the time. She’s always known what she wanted.)

“Ew,” said Dos. She was not liking that visual. “I kissed a boy, too, but I didn’t want to.”

“Who did you kiss?” asked Lizard.

“Nolan! Nolan and Owen kept kissing me and Marley,” Dos admitted. “I think they loved me or something but I tried to run away but them just kept kissing me.”

Oh, it’s so hard to be wanted!

“Dos, if someone kisses you and you don’t want it, you tell them NO! and walk away,” Lizard said. “And if they don’t stop, you punch them right in the face!”

Such aggressive words from my mild-mannered husband!

All during this time I had my phone in my hand, trying to type all the funny stuff in 140 characters or less (granted, I thought it was funny. Maybe my followers didn’t.)

“What are you doing?” Uno demanded. “Are you tweeting that?!” I nodded yes.

“Quick, Dos, don’t say anything else! That’s embarrassing! She’ll just tweet it!”

Oh, she knows me well.

Of course, she’ll pay me back someday when she can tweet and put status updates herself… but by then I’m sure facebook and Twitter will be long gone, dinosaurs gone the way of MySpace and the Tandy Computer.

In the meantime, I will exercise my right to Tweet. So there.

Where are your favorite places to road trip? Do you have any road trip survival tips?