'Stop Touching Me,' Or our Drive to Quebec

I’ve never been able to understand those people who say, with the confidence projected only by someone who knows all the secrets to life and will impart them upon you whether or not you are interested, ‘it’s not important where you go so much as the journey you take.’ I’m here to tell you that is absolutely not true. Or, at least not in my family. For example, we recently had a very nice visit in Quebec. Yet the journey there and back was, in all honesty, very similar (but not exactly the same) as having pointed Bamboo shoots stuck into one's eye.

With the gas prices making everyone sputter this summer, it’s really painful to try to buy plane tickets for a family of four and then justify the cost of eating as well. We solved the dilemma by planning a good old fashioned road trip for our vacation instead of our usual house swap which requires plane flight. Traveling in a car is more cost-efficient, we had reasoned, and, we can stop whenever we want or take fun detours. Oh, but every silver lining has a cloud as my Mother would say!

Rather than bore you with mile by mile detail, I’ll just sum up our trip in three words: ‘stop touching me.’ If you have an only child I can’t imagine what annoying game he or she can drum up to equal the oldest and most irritating of: ‘stop touching me’. It’s so much a part of our culture, that I would bet Pilgrim children were doing this whilst leaning on the railing looking for Plymouth Rock and Pioneer boys and girls were whacking each other to the point of making the wagons tip over. This game is played in our family with such vigor and single minded focus, that I’m hoping they have a ‘stop touching me’ degree at Harvard so my kids can apply. If you are unfamiliar with this game, then continue doing whatever it is you do with your children because it’s working and please forward me the details so I can incorporate immediately.

I’m happy to report that Johnny touched Francis 789 times and Francis retaliated by touching Johnny 790 times. Or that was our tally when we crossed the border and they finally fell asleep 10 hours into the drive. To give them credit, they did break from this game for about 45 minutes to run the fast food gauntlet as we drove along I95 in New York. It went something like:

‘Can we stop at McDonald’s?’
‘No.’
‘Burger King?’
‘No.’
‘Chick Fil-et?’
‘No.’
‘Subway? That’s not junk food.’
‘No. It’s gross.’
‘Mom’s asleep, can we stop at Wendy’s?’
‘You’re wrong and no.’

And on until we finally stopped at what I thought would be remotely healthy ‘Cracker Barrel’ where we waited 45 minutes for a pricier, bigger portioned version of the same thing. As my brother’s fast food conspiracy goes, they are built close to each other because they all share a common kitchen underground. Different cartons are used to fool you, but the food is all cooked by the very same Blackbeard and his rowdy crew chewing tobacco and spitting it into your food. After careful research I also believe this to be true.

Quebec was great. Then we had to return the same way we got there.

Four hours of happy driving came to an abrupt halt when we waved passed the border guards into New York and my younger son noticed a travesty that will henceforth be known as the worst moment in the history of the western hemisphere: Blankie was missing. The tears and lamentations were so extreme that both boys forgot about ‘stop touching me’. Patrick and I whispered furiously trying to reconstruct blankie’s visit step by step and came to the horrific conclusion that he (meaning Blankie) had been left in the window seat of the tiny little café we had stopped at because it was off the beaten path. We had no idea where the place was because we were ‘off the beaten path’ – otherwise known as lost - when we stopped. We had paid cash so there was no number to call or address to write. We were sunk.

With the wailing at a fevered pitch, Patrick focused on keeping the car on the road while I went through my phone list, sending out an SOS to all friends and family. Finally, Aunt Genie called back, AKA blankie’s official seemstress. She told us she had actually made two of the exact same models: one for Johnny and one for a cousin who was still a baby. She put us on hold while she called to see if the baby would miss his blankie if it were given to Johnny. She promised to make the baby cousin something even more spectacular. We promised to pay for threads of pure gold and silver for the replacement.

After multi-line negotiations, this trans-country, bi-lateral trade agreement was reached and we immediately started to distract Johnny with tales of Blankie – which you can read to the right of this column as I’m sure you are dying to do. We promised that Blankie had taken a different route home and would be meeting us at the house that night. The tears slowed to snuffles and ‘stop touching me’ was tentatively started up again. That’s when we knew it was going to be all right.

In case Johnny grows up, learns to read, and looks at this blog (assuming the Internet still exists in the same form 20 years from now), I’m going to tell you the conclusion of the saga like so:

le blankie est un article truqué. Le vrai blankie habite au Québec.