Families on the go sometimes have to find entertainment in non-traditional places: playing the Slug Bug game, or the license plate game or singing songs on a long road trip.
For a family with two teenage boys, the car is sometimes the only place we all sit together and interact during a busy week.
We’ve pretty much given up on the Slug Bug game, as it either leads to anger when the boys punched each other’s arms or disappointment when I would dominate from my position in the driver’s seat.
The singing of songs as a family is a thing of the past, as on any trip of more than 10 minutes the boys are listening to their iPods while my wife has to deal with me singing along with radio tunes.
One piece of entertainment that is still enjoyed by the whole family is our trips to a fast food drive-thru. It’s usually a few short minutes of fun that culminates in some delicious, non-nutritious grub.
The most entertaining drive-thru situations happen when we are with my dad, a fine man and a good citizen but a poor order-placer when he is in the car. And that’s why it’s so entertaining.
One day during a trip to Foster’s Freeze in Hollister, my dad pulled up to the drive-thru ordering board and was greeted by a recorded voice that offered a suggestion of what to eat. In what has become a Breen family favorite story, my dad began to panic after the voice told him to order when ready.
“Hurry, hurry! What do you want!?” he asked us.
“Um, we haven’t even read the menu yet,” we replied, stifling our laughter as he treated the recording as if it were a Mission Impossible message that was going to end with an explosion if we didn’t pick a hamburger in time.
Since that day, he has not been willing to visit a drive-thru when we are in the car. If we are getting fast food with him, we’re parking and going into the restaurant, where the pressure to order from the disembodied voice is not there.
McDonald’s is another restaurant that has the drive-thru recording that offers the “Would you like to try our …” suggestion. I have never taken that suggestion and I don’t know if anyone ever has. Most of the time the order-taker interrupts the recorded message before I hear the suggestion anyway, so the whole thing is kind of pointless.
As our children have gotten older and their appetites have gotten bigger – particularly after a sporting event when their hunger is at its worst – we have begun to let them place their order rather than having them yell what they want from the back of the car.
Now I pull ahead enough so my son can stick his head out the window and select his food. He doesn’t mind doing this because it allows him to sneak in an extra Number 3 or a bonus snack wrap that I probably would have vetoed, or at least questioned, had I been the one placing the order.
When I am the order placer, I try to steal the first bite of the ice cream cone as I pass it over to my wife. The game is will she notice it before I take that bite?
Another game to play is Guess the Ketchup Packets. In this game, you need to ask the other people in your vehicle for a guess about how many ketchup packets the fast food worker will put into the bag. The person who gets closest to the correct number wins. My recommendation is to always double or triple the amount that you feel would adequately flavor your fries or hamburger. A rational person would need maybe two or three packets.
A typical drive thru employee may offer 10 to 12.
Car games are fun and offer quality bonding time. Unfortunately, with gas soaring past $4 per gallon, it’s cheaper to just stay home – though a trip to the drive through can offset a person’s monthly ketchup costs.
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. Email him at ab****@pi**********.com and follow him on Twitter @AdamPBreen.
