The View from the Backseat
Newsletter 2026-06-04
I’m writing this from the backseat of my own minivan. It’s not a place a grown man should ever be. For that matter, it’s not a place any human should sit. After perching in the middle of the third row for most of this trip, I’m not convinced it’s suitable for transporting livestock or even inanimate objects. I’d feel bad for a bag of potatoes that I left back here for any length of time. To think, I’ve been subjecting my children to this for years. It’s my own fault for having so many. I should have only had enough to fill up a standard four-door sedan. There’s a reason that’s been the average size of a nuclear family for the last half century. If only I had listened. I‘ll outsource all future family planning decisions to the Ford Motor Company.
I didn’t end up in the backseat on purpose. As with most of my conundrums, I got here through a series of strategic missteps, each more poorly thought out than the last. I planned a roller coaster outing to Cedar Point. My initial itinerary called for a party of six, with no need for anyone to sit in a middle seat. You might note that that’s exactly the number of people I have in my family. Unfortunately, I’m raising a crew of cowards. Only my oldest daughter, Betsy, is brave enough to enjoy the bounty the roller coaster gods have to offer. I hope that my youngest, Waffle, will get there someday, but on our test run to King’s Island, she topped out at medium-sized coasters. We couldn’t take her on a two-day trip to battle the biggest steel monsters on the planet. That would be two days of her watching everyone else ride roller coasters, or, more likely, two days of her watching us stand in line. She’ll build up her tolerance for velocity eventually, but it didn’t happen in time for this adventure. This outing was reserved for the bravest of the brave and the dumbest of the dumb. Sign me up.
The original roster for Cedar Point consisted of me, Betsy, my brother-in-law, Jerry, my friend Roscoe, and my geographically closest brothers, Arthur and Nathaniel. At the last minute, Nathaniel cancelled after we had already purchased the tickets. He recently entered the workforce, securing grown-up employment in a blue-collar field. An emergency job popped up that interfered with the dates of the roller coaster trip. The first step toward being dead inside is always a small one. I told Betsy she could invite a friend in his place. That was bad for me since I’d have to pay for three shares of the trip instead of just two, but it was good for her since she’d be able to hang out with someone her own age rather than yet another extremely dorky adult man. Then Nathaniel uncanceled. A pipe burst at the job site, shifting timelines and freeing him up for the trip. I told him he could come. That moved us up to seven people, which, oddly enough, isn’t a number my eight-person van accommodates well. A minivan is built for two parents and four small children, with two gaps for lap pets and/or stuffed animals. I overruled those logistical considerations since I’ve spent almost no time with my youngest brother, who was born twenty-two years after me. I wanted to learn more about him. Something I learned right away was that he’s too big to fit in the backseat of a minivan. It was the first of many hard lessons that day.
Even with an overloaded van, I should have been fine, which is always my main concern. As the proud owner of this magnificent vehicle, I have a place of honor reserved in the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, Betsy needs driving hours. Actually, the unfortunate part is that I failed to help her get those hours sooner. Under Indiana’s new law, she’ll be able to get her license on July 1—assuming she has fifty hours of driving time first. Time is running out. We’re now squeezing in last-minute driving hours like we’re cramming for a final exam. It was a five-hour drive to Cedar Point, making it a ten-hour round trip. That was too much time not to take advantage of. Every minute she sat in the driver’s seat on a trip where I had to be in the van the whole time anyway was a minute I didn’t have to spend on an extra, pointless trip circling random country roads later in June. Did it imperil the lives of six other people? Absolutely, but to get Betsy her license as soon as possible, that was a risk I was willing to take. I am so over driving her to her nine million activities. You don’t want to know the list of crimes I’m willing to commit to get out of it. The threat of death was strictly hypothetical. The more real consequence was that we had to swap seats. Legally, Betsy could drive as long as a relative by blood or marriage was in the front passenger seat. All of her uncles counted. Jerry took that job. Since I was the one who said yes to person number seven, I took the punishment seat in the middle of the back row. That’s how I discovered that family bonding isn’t even remotely worth that level of discomfort. I’ll die a hermit before I ever agree to sit back there again.
My time in the back row was eye-opening. I felt so much more g-force in the back than in the front. I didn’t need the roller coasters. The drive to the amusement park was more than enough of a thrill. What seems like a gradual turn up front feels, in back, like a dragon whipping its tail. I now understand why Betsy feels motion sick back there. I also get why my wife Lola gets mad at me when I drive us and other couples on winery tours and she has to sit in back. Up front, it seems like I’m calm and competent. To passengers in the back, it’s not clear if I have a driver’s license. I shouldn’t be offended by her comments from the back row. I should be grateful that she doesn’t say more.
Another major revelation in back was that I could hear the people up front perfectly. Every comment they made carried. My kids have been claiming for their entire lives that they can’t make out my words, giving them an excuse to ignore me. It’s good to know that they’ve been deliberately tuning me out. Had I not overbooked us for this trip, I never would have known. I wonder what other secrets they’ve been hiding from me. If I have to squeeze into a small space for hours on end to learn the truth, I’d rather remain in the dark.
My brothers fared better than I did. As the youngest siblings of seven, Arthur and Nathaniel have spent their lives in backseats. They’ve adapted to it. They can sleep sitting up without leaning their heads against anything. They’re only a step away from locking their knees like horses to sleep standing up. They didn’t know there was any other way to travel until they were old enough to drive themselves. That upbringing made them immune to the inconveniences of the road. They’d be the ultimate flight companions. You could shove them in the overhead bin and they’d just shrug, or at least they would if there were shoulder room. That would still be more space than they get in the backseat.
Being relegated to the backseat wasn’t entirely negative.
