Road Trip With Magi

[dr_pretentious]

"Mommy, I'm the only one in the world allowed to have magic! Make Conrad stop saying his magic is powerfuller!" That's my firstborn the self-styled magus talking. And talking and talking, for miles.

Hands gripping the steering wheel, I remember with mortification how my sister and I subjected our parents to arguments this goofy when we were little, on ten hour drives from DC to Rochester. It's a wonder anyone lives to adulthood.

"No!" protests my two-year-old, when his brother finally pauses for breath. "My magic pow'ful! My magic yellow!"

"Yellow?" I ask. "Why yellow?"

"Because," Gareth says, "my magic is pink." I'm not sure why that would make Conrad's magic yellow, but okay, Gareth sounds like this is really obvious to him, so why not?

Now that the boys' magics are different colors, the wizard wars in the back seat settle into a truce. Gareth declares that he has resumed his kitty form. Conrad chimes in cheerfully about taking owl form. If I had a handy recording of that ancient ballad The Twa Magicians, I'd queue it up on the car stereo now.

Tomorrow they'll argue this same issue again. I will point out that everyone has magic. My husband, who these days identifies as an atheist, will say that everyone is equally likely to have magic, which is a diplomatic bit of hedging. Gareth will keep grandstanding like MacGregor Mathers edited for kindergarten. I'm so glad Conrad has his yellow magic and his owl form now. Until he can keep up enough to set the terms of the pretend games sometimes, he needs a way to play in Gareth's.

How did a kitchen witch like me end up with this mageboy?

Comments

[amushink.livejournal.com]

Long car trips = jack Flanders for us. Travels with Jack bemuse and confuse even a toddler. We get on the ZBS website these days before family vacations and argue about which story to download. Best cure for backseat arguing I've ever found. Because we can only sing along with Queen for just so long.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

My parents diverted us with sing-a-longs and I Spy. But, then, we live in a much smaller country. Our longest car trip at that age was 3 hours, going to north Wales. Mind you, Mum says we were bearable then because we were excited about going on holiday. It was the everyday transformation of children into screaming banshees in shops that utterly mortified her. Neither of us remember it that way, but she has vivid memories of dragging us out of shops for trying to murder one another.

[laradionne.livejournal.com]

I frequently had to sit in the middle so that my brothers could not possibly touch each other. I completely agree that it's a major miracle that all three of us lived to reach adulthood. The annual road trip from Dallas, TX to the Fish Creek Ponds campsite up in the Adirondak Mountains of NY was loaded with cries of, "Make [insert name of sibling here] stop making fun of me!", etc. and the occasional, "Don't make me pull this car over!" threat tossed over the seats. We played license plate games, and car color games, and "who can spot the sign for the rest area first" games, we had coloring books and puzzle books and the car sickness induced by trying to read while in the back seat. None of us got strangled... I'm sure it must have been tempting though.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

[castalusoria.livejournal.com]

This tale made me chuckle-- thank you so much for sharing it! Wee-one-logic mystifies me-- and is, indeed, entertaining!

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

A kitchen witch with an enormous imagination. It must be in the genes.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

THIS!