Hotter Than Blue Googles

“Mom! How much longer? I’m hungry!”

The little boy was shouting from his booster seat in the back of the minivan. He was five and wore a ball cap that was just a little too big since he had gotten his summer haircut.

“My hungry!” whined his little brother, who was three and strapped in his car seat in the middle of the van. He had brown hair like his grandma and tear streaks on both flushed cheeks from where he had lost a battle earlier with his mom about wearing sandals instead of green frog galoshes.

“Da-da-da!” yelled the youngest, a little girl just recently promoted to a seat where she didn’t have to ride everywhere backwards. Her hair was blonde and just long enough to start curling at the ends. She didn’t really care about being in the van so long, so long as she was buckled and could yell whenever her brothers did.

The children’s father stopped singing along with the Wiggles long enough to twist around in the front passenger seat and shout back, “Not long, guys! Not long!”

The dad wore mismatched tennis shoes to be silly and had, like the oldest child, a new summer haircut. He told everyone that the short hair made him look a little like George Clooney, but the truth was that he thought he was closer to a combination of Shrek and Peewee Herman.

“I’m hungry!” was the response from the back of the van, so the dad, when he turned back around, rapped his knuckles on his window. “Hey! Look at that big dump truck over there! Wow, it’s a big one? You guys see it? And hey! There’s a digger!”

“Cool!” yelled back the oldest, pressing his face against the window as they passed another construction site. The other two didn’t say anything. The other boy, who was a little past three years old, was looking out of the wrong window, and the little girl was too busy trying to take off her shoes to even look.

“There,” sighed the dad. He reached over and pinched the mom’s elbow. She tried to slap him with one hand, but he jerked away too quickly. He laughed, “Now, that gives us about a minute before they start thinking about food again. How much farther is this place anyway?”

“The next light is the road it’s on, so not far,” she said. She had blonde hair, like two of their children, and a little spattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her shoes matched, but she didn’t mind that her husband mixed his colors up on purpose. She also liked his haircut and didn’t agree at all with the whole Ogre-Peewee thing.

They made the turn not longer after that and hadn’t gone very far, when the dad said, “Hey, this is the road the quarry’s on. Are you sure the restaurant’s this way? There’s nothing really back here that I remember.”

The mom frowned at him and turned the Wiggles’ volume down a bit. “You never listen, do you? It’s new. That’s why we got the coupons stuck on our door.” She reached down and dug between the front seats until she found a bent flyer. She waved it at the dad, but he wouldn’t take it.

“Okay, I remember now, but I’ll get sick if I read it. Did you forget that? Huh?” He poked her in the side with one knuckle as she stuck the coupons up behind the sun visor on her side.

“Stop it,” the mom laughed. “Anyway, the kids eat free and we get buy-one-get-one free. We can’t get beat that anywhere else. Plus, the ad said that it had a play land, so the kids will like it.”

“Cool.” The dad started biting his nails and then stopped. “What was it called again? Furry Chickens?”

The mom rolled her eyes and grinned. “No, Goofy. It’s Safari Chick’s – it’s supposed to have a jungle theme – monkeys, giraffes, elephants…”

“Ellies!” yelled the youngest suddenly. She liked elephants and had several stuffed toys lying all over the place back home.

“Yes! Ellies!” echoed both parents happily.

“Ellies!” everyone shouted.

The little girl threw both her arms up and yelled something else utterly unintelligible. She let go of her left sandal – which she’d been holding ever since she finally un-Velcroed it from around her ankle – flew into the air and hit the brother next to her right in the side of his head. He screamed the high-pitched distress call only a three-year-old can make, flailed his feet against the back of his dad’s seat, and lashed out with a little fist at his sister. He popped her right on the forehead. She let out a shriek like the raptors on those Jurassic movies. The dad felt his eardrums buzz with feedback. The mom swerved slightly but stayed in her lane.

“No hitting! It was an accident!” The dad shouted. “An accident, okay? You’re all okay! Stop the drama!” He twisted around his seat and tried to separate, calm, and console all at the same time. It didn’t work. The two toddlers just screamed and smacked at each other like two crazy raccoons. Then, he spun back to the front and turned the volume knob on the radio up a few spins. Over the crying and blaring kids’ music, he yelled, “Hey, the Wiggles! Let’s sing! That’ll be fun! Hey there! Shaky Shaky!”

Gripping the steering wheel with both white-knuckled hands, the mom screamed louder than anyone, “I’m turning the van around and going home if everyone doesn’t shut up! You too, Dad!”

The dad stopped singing and switched off the Wiggles. The two youngest children stopped crying and just sniffled. The oldest boy all the way in the back looked up from his action figure that he had just beheaded and made eye contact with his mom in the rear view mirror.

“Mom! Are we there yet? I’m hungry!”