But back to my daughter, who really hates being driven! My wife and I have sensitively adjusted to this condition by repeatedly placing her in a rear-facing car seat and taking her on long drives in the middle of the day. Recently, we drove the whole family to Charlottesville, Virginia, which is one of the most wonderful places on earth if you don't have children or a debilitating illness courtesy of those children.
That's right, my daughter is already vengeful. Is she aware of her vengefulness? She might be. Her favorite word is "no," which she understands to mean "sure!" She happily shakes her head when you tell her no before resuming whatever she was doing, such as swallowing a nightlight. In the restraints of the carseat, there is little she can do, so she responds by crying or screaming or a sort of crying-screaming hybrid that sounds almost like laughter. She insists I hold her hand, difficult though not impossible as that may be while operating a moving vehicle. I thought that the fourteen-hour roundtrip drive might cure my daughter of her driving hatred, but it seems only to have reenforced it.
Just kidding, I never thought it would get better! Really, I didn't think anything at all. When more than one person in Charlottesville asked me what our plan was for the ride home, I started laughing or maybe crying-screaming. You have to understand I was very ill. At one point, on Route 29, my wife, son, and daughter were all asleep. The Blue Ridge Mountains rose to my left, and hills rolled gently into fast food restaurants and gas stations to my right. I thought: This isn't so bad. And it wasn't. Then somebody or everybody started crying, and I thought: This is very bad! Then I forgot, which is the only thing you can do.
Asleep... for now.
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