Wednesday morning, we embarked on the Laws cousin roadtrip to take in Antietam and Gettysburg. We had a solid eight-hour drive to Hagerstown, Maryland, where I had booked our hotels. The ride was amazing, incredible even. And by amazing, I mean, “Wow, I didn’t know this was possible,” and by incredible, I mean, “You will not find my story credible.”
We drove from ten am till 2:45 pm, and with four kids in the car, no one talked. At all. At any point. For any reason. Granted, they all had devices, and I expected to be earbudded, but this was stunning. When I announced we would soon stop for lunch, I got some glassy-eyed stares and nods. When we finally stopped at a Chick-Fil-A, we sat together around a table, and I said, “So Eli, what did you do on your phone the whole drive?”
“Watched YouTube videos mostly,” he said.
“What did you watch?”
“Like, shorts and stuff.”
“What about?”
“Uhhh . . . ummm . . .”
Emma said, “Come on, Eli. You were just watching them.”
“I don’t really know,” said Eli.
I looked at Will and Emma. “So is Eli being passive aggressive? Does he hate me? Or is this normal?”
Emma said, “He can never answer my mom’s questions about school when we get home.”
“It’s mostly normal,” said Will.
I asked Will and Emma what they had done, and they were able to tell me at least one game they had played on their phones.
We reached Hagerstown just after seven and checked into our hotel. After some dinner at Mission Barbecue and a visit to the Confederate cemetery at Rose Hill, I told them a bunch of stories about their father (like how I told him the devil lived in the toilet and ruined his and my mom’s sleep for two years when we were kids). Eventually, we retired to our room whereupon Graham asked Eli if he wanted to hear about the infamous waffle stomping at FSY. Emma immediately hollered, “No, Graham! You can be quiet now!” Which of course meant that Eli had to hear it.
Graham told the story, then went on to say, “If you’re running a marathon on a personal-record pace and you suddenly have to poop, do you stop or tough it out?”
Emma bellowed, “Graham! You don’t need to say anything else this evening!”
I said, “I’m sorry, Emma. You’re way outnumbered, and unfortunately, there will almost certainly be a lot of poop and fart talk.”
“It’s not fair,” she said. “I got about half a day with my girl cousins.”
It’s not fair, Emma. You’re right. So few things about life are fair.
In the meantime, Graham is investigating who just ripped.
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