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Is there a law against packing your rotten children into a roof rack?

November 23, 2008 nnyq.com edit I almost wish that highways, automobiles and vacations were never invented. Every time June rolls around, I gotta pack up my miserable family, drive them all over hell’s half-acre, and stop at every stinking roadside “World’s Biggest Wad of Who-the-Hell-Cares” along the way. I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad if I actually liked the people I live with, but I can only tkae them in small doses. That’s why I work so many hours down at Bathrooms Emporium. It keeps me from having to put up with their incessant chatter about how their day’s been, how badly Kevin is doing in geometry, and how Luanne’s mother’s social-security check isn’t going to cover the cost of her blood-pressure medicine down at Golden Slumbers Retirement Jamboree. Yak. Yak Yak.

During last summer’s root-canal of a road trip up the California coast, I almost snapped. Because my brainless sons can’t go fifteen minutes without thinking about their Xbox, they insisted on bringing it along to hook into the Uplander’s entertainment system. Now, before these goals squeezed in their electronics, my minivan was already packed to the gills with a Sanford-sized hoard of junk—everything from my wife’s five suitcases of clothes she’ll never wear to the boys’ matching Spongebob sleeping bags. Add to that a big cooler stuffed with high-fructose snacks, a couple of road bikes, and enough camera and video equipment to document the Korean War. It was damn cramped. But can you guess how many bags I brought along? One. Just a single, solitary Samsonite duffle with four pairs of socks, three freshly ironed BVDs, a couple of shorts and T-shirts, and plenty of antacids.

Not only was I feeling claustrophobic, but those ingrates in the rear were hooting and hollering like monkeys in heat, and Luanne had her yap flapping at a hundred words a minute about some injustice done to her pinkie toe by a shaky-handed Laotian pedicurist. I was trapped, and our rest stop in San Simeon was still a dreary 100 miles away. Then, those little monsters behind me began fighting over their game, and their flailing limbs knocked soda all over my single, solitary piece of luggage, which was as porous as a matzo cracker. So much for my white undies! Had I not thrown back a handful of valium before the trip, I swear I would have driven right through the guard rail. I don’t fear death by water anymore.

This year, I get do it all over again. However, I’ll need a lot more breathing room in the van to stave off my increasingly vivid family fatality fantasies. So I’m looking into roof racks. With a roof top cargo carrier riding along, I can stuff most of my family’s stuff outside of the cockpit. And you better believe that my still-sticky Samsonite duffle is going to be tucked safely away from my bratty brood as they swill down can after can of pop on the road to early onset diabetes.