Well, here we all are, back in our vehicles again as the school car pooling season resumes. Much has been written about the awfulness of spending hours crisscrossing Washington with a cargo of children, but, it must be said, there can be amusing compensations.
Sharing a car with lots of children can mean sharing their confidence; it can also mean sharing games that you’d never otherwise play.
On a recent morning, as I maneuvered a minivan full of schoolgirls, the noise was terrific. With seven children on board, from a trio of fifth-graders to a child in nursery school, the thing handled like an armored car and practically pulsed from the ebullient back-to-school racket inside.
It was only after we’d been driving for a while did I become aware that there was method in the noisy madness.
“Cheese sandwich!” yelled a girl in the middle seats.
“Blueberry!” cried the girl next to her.
“Mozzarella!” shouted the girl sitting in the passenger seat beside me,
“Strawber—pshew!” A girl in the way-way-back half-yelled, half-sneezed.
“Bless you,” said a middle-seater, “Cheese sandwich.”
“I already got that one.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Those were mine. Cheese sandwich! Got another.”
“Um, girls? What’s a cheese sandwich?”
“A yellow car, or bus. Also cream color.”
Aha, so that was it: Mozzarella meant a white vehicle, strawberry was red, and blueberry was obvious. At that point a kind of ripple went around the car but I didn’t realize what it signified until one of the middle-seated girls leaned forward and socked the arm of the girl in the passenger seat.
The girl in the passenger seat took the blow without remark, and promptly passed it on to me.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Punch buggy,” said several voices from the back.
“Punch Buggy No Punch Back,” explained the nursery school child, referring to the incredibly tedious game in which you collect points for spotting Volkswagen Beetles — true fanatics keep track into the thousands — and get to thump everyone else in the car. As the name suggests, they’re not supposed to thump you back.
Sometimes, as in the day I’m describing, the punching travels from person to person, like the flu, only faster.
“Strawberry jam, strawberry jam, strawberry jam,” one child said quickly under her breath, as a string of red cars shot past in the other direction.
“Ooh! Jam! Now I have six,” said someone else.
“It doesn’t count. You can’t say just jam. You have to say strawberry jam,” said a smarty-pants.
“Want to see how long I can hold my breath?” the nursery child asked the older girl strapped in beside her. The big girl nodded. The little girl blew out her cheeks, widened her eyes, and breathed through her nose.
“Wow,” the bigger girl said kindly, “Impressive!” And then she sneezed.
“Mold!”
“Ew!”
“What? Mold means a gray car.”
“OK, we’re here,” I said, braking in front of the school. Suddenly, the child beside me sneezed. And that’s when it hit me: The cheese sandwich game was by no means the only thing we’d just shared.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
