I am back in the Renault Alliance we bought while in graduate school.  There are a number of memories that were created in that vehicle.

 

Hey!!!

 

FAMILY  memories!!

We are a family that thinks nothing of getting in the car and driving 12 hours to visit someone we care about. We have no problem driving several hours in one day for an hour event.  We travel well – and often.  Except late at night. We have dear friends who used to “drive through the night” to their destination when we were all younger… not us.  We just can’t do that.  

 

We are also a family where foul language is not the norm.  There are many reasons for this in our lives, and the one I will share today is that we felt, and still do, that when raising children, parents should be mindful of what comes out of their mouths.  In regards to many things, not just dirty words. We just didn’t swear. (Remember the Happy Birthday blog, where I admit to the first time that any of our children heard me say a swear word.)

 

It was late and we were poor. We had a sleeping toddler in the back seat that had been very well behaved at whatever meeting we had just spent the day attending. We were still quite a distance from home and the hubster was driving.  We decided a cup of coffee would keep us awake, so we pulled into a Burger King.

 

It was late enough that the lobby was closed, so we had to go through the drive thru.  We were scraping change together in the ashtray in order to pay for the coffee.  The toddler is still asleep… thank goodness, because we don’t need a cranky child for the remainder of the trip home.  

 

As we are waiting for our coffee at the window, the dreaded happens.  

 

Toddler wakes up.

 

UGH!

 

He stretches, and looks around, apparently confused as to what is going on.  Last thing he knew we were driving on the “big road”.  I, on the other hand, am hoping if we ignore him, he will just close his eyes and go back to sleep.

 

Not so much…

 

As the BK employee is handing the coffee out the window to my DH, said toddler says in a very loud voice:

 

WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?

 

Yes folks, you read that right.

 

To this day, I have NO IDEA where he ever heard that said. NO IDEA how he knew to use the phrase correctly.  All I knew was that I was positive the BK employee “knew” we were the Pastoral family and was astounded that we had obviously taught our toddler to swear like a sailor.

 

We sucked air, collected our coffee and drove off as quickly as possible.

 

Suffice it to say, we had no trouble staying awake for the rest of the trip… while our sweet little boy dozed back off to sleep.
SMH…