Matthew Monday: I Spy

We, my wife, Matthew, and I were driving on a long trip, a vacation down to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  The entire drive takes about ten hours non-stop, but I figured Matthew is not ready for such a long non-stop trip, and so I broke the drive into two five hour halves.  Of course that assumes you don’t hit any traffic, and there was an hour delay on the New Jersey Turnpike (I guess it was for construction, but we didn’t actually see anything) and an hour and a half in the Washington D.C. area, which I guess was just because of volume.  As it turned out, even a five hour leg was too much for Matthew. 

How do you keep an active, talkative four-almost-five year old boy busy while strapped to his child seat in the back alone?  You don’t.  I’m mean, yeah, there are songs and talk games, but that gets old for adults, especially adults that are over fifty.  You want a little peace and quiet after a while.  No wonder some of these new minivans come with DVD players.  But we don’t have one.  We have our eleven year old SUV, which as it turns out turned eleven years to the day on that day.  You can give him some little toys to play with, but shortly thereafter he drops it and can’t reach it.   

And after a while, he doesn’t shut up.  Ahhhh!  He can’t go sixty seconds without saying something.  

One game we played to keep him occupied was “I spy.”  One person in the car sees something on the road, say a blue pickup truck, and says, “I spy blue pickup truck,” and everyone looks around and tries to identify it. 

Daddy: “I spy a big tree.” 

Matthew:  “That one Daddy, over there?” 

Daddy: “Yes.” 

Matthew: “My turn now.  I spy a white bus.” 

Mommy, who is driving: “It just passed us.” 

Daddy:  “I spy motorcycle.” 

Matthew:  “There’s one.  I want to go now.  I spy…”  There’s a delay here while he looks around for something to identify.  “I spy…uh…something grey and black.” 

Daddy, looking around and not seeing anything: “Do you mean this charcoal car?  It’s kind of grey and black.” 

Matthew:  “No.”  Everyone is looking around. 

Mommy:  “What’s grey and black?” 

Matthew:  “Daddy’s head!”   

Big, big laughter from the two of them.  Haha.  Me not so much. I could manage a smirk.