Matthew Osborne
Before our trip to Florida for Thanksgiving, I was concerned about how three boys – including two teenagers – could survive all that time in the backseat of a two-row car.
I honestly expected it to be a total disaster and for a time, I considered just not even attempting it. But it has taken me three years to get this Thanksgiving trip to my mom’s house correct, and I was not going to blow it now and make it four.
We lost our three-row car when someone pulled into the road and hit my wife in Franklin County earlier this year. She was OK, thankfully, but the loss of the car could not have come at a worse time, as auto prices have skyrocketed. We basically could not afford a three-row car, and so, the boys lost their personal space when we are all together.
Despite my concerns, the trip down was peaceful, partly because we left at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. (The Atlanta traffic is real, as we all know.) We made it to breakfast on the other side of the city, and we got to Florida with little difficulty and no incidents.
One problem I encountered, though, is that everyone in the car aside from the driver (usually me) is either sleeping or is on a device.
When I was a kid, we had to talk to each other occasionally since we did not really have such devices to entertain us. We used to rotate what music we listened to and we each got a turn. When my sister was little, I dreaded her picks because it was always Disney or something awful, but rules are rules.
(On the upside, we had a minivan and just four of us, so space was abundant then.)
We made some drives from Florida to Philadelphia or Toledo, Ohio, back then that made our recent trip look like nothing. Those trips were like that movie “Plains, Trains and Automobiles,” including me falling off the top of the ice-coated van while trying to unlock the X-Cargo full of Christmas presents.
So in retrospect, having no one talk to me to entertain me over a nine-hour drive doesn’t seem as bad, but all things in their time.
Finally, near the end of the trip, I got some of my family members engaged in a discussion about actors in comic book movies. Obviously, my conversation topics are limited, so this gave me a chance to converse about something in my wheelhouse.
We mainly centered on questions like “Who was the best Spider-Man actor?” and such topics, and we realized at one point that – perhaps by default – Tom Hardy was both the best Bane and the best Venom.
“But he’ll never be the best Picard,” my wife quipped.
I was confused, and she was delighted that she knew a Star Trek fact that somehow I did not, the fact being that Hardy played Captain Picard’s clone in “Star Trek: Nemesis.”
I got revenge though, while Sam, Mom and Ollie were watching “The Grinch,” and the movie was coming to its predictable end. I have an affinity for mixing movie references, so I asked the group why the Whos were not under the protection of Odin Borson the Allfather, since Anthony Hopkins was the narrator.
They all looked at me strangely. Come on, nobody here knew that was Anthony Hopkins, perhaps our greatest living actor?
We all learned something this holiday, I guess.
On the way back, things were going great. I was driving fast, but safely, and we were making great time. That is, until a milkshake meltdown in the back seat caused an extra stop for disciplinary purposes, with fewer than two hours left until home.
But it was a great Thanksgiving, and now Mariah Carey is here to take us through the next four weeks until that floor is covered in wrapping paper and Dad is napping at around noon on Christmas Day.
And what a ride it will be.
Matthew Osborne is the editor of The Northeast Georgian. Reach him at 706-778-4215 or editor@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.