Road trip!

I've always heard that as parents age they become more like children and that while they once took care of us there comes a day we take care of them. Well, I'm beginning to see more and more how true that is.

My parents and I drove from FL to SC together. Mom drove the first three hours and then I drove the rest of the way (about 5 hours). Dad stayed in the back seat the whole time. Not that that stops him from providing driving instructions or hints to us.

At one time he gave me instructions on how to use the cruise control "properly". Example: he wanted me to know that you can "bump up your speed" easily. So I said, "Dad are you trying to tell me you want me to go faster". He quickly says no but then he starts to count how many vehicles pass me. Not just how many but how many are trucks or SUV's compared to how many are just cars. He tried to not be too obvious and pretended he was just observing that more SUV drivers speed than car drivers do. But I wasn't buying it.

The funniest thing was when I'm just driving and about to pass motor home and my parents start discussing how weird that thing looked. "The back looks like the front" was the comment that really caught my attention. So I stared at this big thing and tried to figure out exactly what the heck they were talking about. I said "that doesn't look anything like the front" and both began to correct me. So to make peace I said "okay, if you put in a window, add a driver, replace the tail lights with head lights and then take off the ladder...then maybe it would look like the front". The entire time I'm laughing so hard I can barely get the words out.

So after 5-7 hours of my dad counting vehicles I looked at mom and said, "it reminds of kids who ask every few minutes - "are we there yet?"."