After pounding on the window and screaming at her little sister accomplished nothing, my oldest daughter finally gave up. She did not move to the other side of the car however, she just grew very quiet. She leaned over and peered through the window at her sister, like a cat watching a goldfish in a bowl. The goldfish in this analogy never bothered to look up or admit she had even noticed a cat in the vicinity.
What were my wife and I doing at the time? Well, let’s just acknowledge that we suck as parents and move on, shall we? Let’s focus on the fact that the kids were engaged in an epic standoff, and I just wanted to see what would happen next.
Except that nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. After about five minutes passed and neither girl had spoken or moved, my short attention span got the better of me. I became bored, then a little irritated. I realized it was time for me to take action. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway and drove off.
I’m not kidding. I drove away with one kid still standing in the garage. Why? Well, as I noted above, I was merely continuing the parental suckage, maybe even kicking it up a level. Besides that, I figured if they couldn’t settle their differences, maybe they needed some time apart. I might have driven all the way to LA, if my wife hadn’t placed a hand on my arm and convinced me to go back. She is often the only voice of reason in our family. She told me, “You can’t do this to her. She is going to be the one that picks which nursing home we end up in.”
I stopped the car, put it in reverse and returned to the driveway.
“Don’t run her over,” my wife told me, quietly. I would say it was an unnecessary warning except that I actually did consider it for a moment. A very short moment, but still….
I figured my daughter would be relieved enough that I came back that she would happily climb into the car without further confrontation, but I gravely underestimated the hate that two siblings can generate for one another. She returned to her previous post, slammed her hand once more on the window, and ordered her sister to move over. With her left hand, the younger one patted the empty seat next to her, then closed her eyes to focus more fully on her music. The cat and fish game resumed.
I yelled. I know I yelled because I did that loud, shouty thing I do that generally makes people start telling me to stop yelling. In fact, I was louder and shoutier than usual, but the motionless golem standing outside the car did not react. She was completely unable, or unwilling, to pull her attention away from her younger sister (who, by the way, was now bobbing her head to whatever she was listening to and pretending that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was happening).
Being ignored while I’m yelling does not usually help to improve my mood. I’m funny that way. And this particular time was no exception. I opened my door and lurched out of the car. When my daughter finally looked up and met my gaze, I reminded her that I used to be a police officer. I told her that being a police officer means that I own guns. It also means, I know how to make a homicide look like an accident.
She finally got in the car. Before she did, she rolled her eyes and muttered something about me always overreacting to things. Yes, the kid that had just spend the past fifteen minutes banging on a window and screaming at her sister rather than walk around the car to get in told me I was overreacting. I’m not saying she was wrong, but she said it with absolutely no irony in her voice. She was serious.
Shaking my head in numb disbelief, I climbed back in, buckled my seatbelt, and took a deep breath. I was still upset, and needing to have the last word, I told the girls, “I swear to God, if you two start fighting again, I’m going to stop this car and our vacation is over.”
I don’t know who said it. I wasn’t looking in the rearview mirror at the time, so I can’t say for certain. I just know that I heard a voice coming from the back seat that said, “What vacation? We’re still in the driveway.”
I blacked out.
The next thing I remember is my right foot tangled up in my seatbelt and my head in the rear floorboards. Both girls were out of the car, screaming and running for the neighbor’s house, and my wife was on her cell phone, talking to the hotel and explaining that we would be arriving much later than originally planned.