So during my post yesterday I mentioned that when I broke my arm Robbie and Ronnie were sentenced to the car while we were in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital. They stayed out there the entire time. They wouldn't have dared get out of the car and come into the hospital, because they were told to stay in the car. There was no danger. It was 1969 in Nacogdoches, Texas, it was a crisp fall afternoon, the windows were down, and there was no danger of them starving or dying of thirst before we got back.
I'm not sure what the crime rate was like back in Nacogdoches in 1969 but I would guess that once you got more than a block from the SFA campus it was pretty close to Mayberry's crime rate. However, I am not absolutely sure that the fact that it was Nacogdoches was what made my parents feel that they were safe in the car that day. I also remember waiting in the car for Mom when we had the Ford Fairlane at the drugstore in Alvin before we moved to Nacogdoches. That would mean that I was five or younger.
You see there were three of us all within 4-1/2 years of one another in age. We were decent kids but we were not perfect kids. Back in the 60's you didn't look around parking lots and see a lot of portable strollers that folded up into a small thing that could fit into the back of your car with the flick of one finger. If mom had wanted to stick us in a stroller, there would have been three of them and they would have been bigger than the car by the time they were all shoved together. And things didn't fold with the flick of a finger back then, so she would have had to haul the strollers around town in a U-Haul hitched to the back of the car. That wasn't an option. So, she either took us in with her with all of us walking and tried to keep up with us, and let me tell you, Ronnie was a full time job all by himself, or she told us to wait in the car if she was going to be quick.
There were rules about waiting in the car. We rolled the windows down, she turned the car off and took the keys with her since everyone knew that Ronnie would not just sit in his seat quietly thinking about what he would do when he got home. He was a very hyper little kid. My parents knew this about him. So Mom always took the keys with her. Then she told us all to stay in the car and she would be right back. I guess she was concerned that one of us would get out and go play in the street - probably Ronnie. As soon as she was gone, Ronnie would get in the drivers seat, start messing with everything and pretend he was driving the car. Robbie and I would tell him he better stop or he was going to get in trouble. He didn't care.
As far as I know, there were no toddler seats back then either. When we went somewhere, Ronnie stood on the seat so that he could see everything. When all five of us went somewhere together, Robbie, Ronnie and I all had to sit in the back seat together. I don't remember how the person in the middle was ever decided except that we would call "hump" or "no hump" as we were getting into the car. The hump was obviously the middle seat. Ronnie sometimes wanted to sit there because then he could stand on the hump. I can tell you that it was just understood that Robbie never had to sit in the middle unless Ronnie and I were fighting and Mom made him sit in the middle to separate us. On the other hand, if Robbie and Ronnie were fighting I had to sit in the middle. You might notice that Ronnie is involved in each of these fighting scenarios.... Not a coincidence.
Now people have to buy enormous SUV's so that each kid has their own row of seats in the car which alleviates all contact in the vehicle. Back then three kids were crammed into the back of a Ford sedan and off the family went for a 2,000 mile trip across half of the country. If we started complaining that one of us had touched the other, they threatened us with having to put the dreaded seat belts on!!!! That was the worst thing that could happen in the car. Usually, we only had to wear seat belts when we were on a family trip or driving in a big city. If we went to Houston or Dallas, as we were starting to get close to the city, Dad would tell us to put our seat belts on. On long trips for some reason, we would also have to wear them at times. Once I remember we were in Colorado driving through the mountains on a two lane road with mountain on one side of the car and a shear drop off on the other side. Ronnie was terrified that Dad was going to miss a turn and we would go off the side of the mountain. We had all been allowed to take our seat belts off so that we could see everything and Ronnie strapped himself as tightly as he could in his seat belt on the side of the car farthest from the drop off and refused to look. It was the only time I ever recall seeing him willingly put a seat belt on when we were kids.
I figured out pretty early on that since Ronnie was always doing something to get in trouble, I could simply imply that he had done something and he would get in trouble. So, when we were in the car, he could just look at me and I would wail "RONNIE STOP!!!!!" And Mom would demand that he stop right then. He would whine that he didn't do anything and he would again be told to stop. Bwaaaahaaaaahaaa!!!! The car was the perfect place for this since Mom was busy driving and might have missed something that he had done (or not done) and it drove her crazy when we started fighting in the car. I would feel bad about having done that if he hadn't always been kind of mean and there had been any other way to get back at him. If you know Ronnie as an adult you know that he is the nicest, most laid back person in the world. But back then he was just mean!
Going out to eat was always fun as a kid too. We would leave our house on Nottingham Dr. and head to El Pollino's on King St. The entire drive from our driveway to the restaurant was spent with Mom lecturing us about how we were to behave once we were in El Pollino. You would have thought we were going to a four star resort for dinner. We had to keep our voices down, stay in our seats, order tea or milk, NO COKE! There were a lot of demands and we did whatever Mom and Dad said because if we didn't they had already told us what the consequences would be. We never got empty threats. Now as an adult, I would pay other people with small children to start them out by taking them to El Pollino and lecturing them during their drive.
I get so sick of going to a nice restaurant where I know that my meal is going to cost $50 and having it ruined by some one's three year old four tables over who is too precious to be left home with a babysitter or to be disciplined in anyway. And the fact that he gets quieter when he is running in circles around the tables does not make running around the tables acceptable! We all get that you don't want to ruin your meal by stopping down and taking little Johnny outside and threatening him within an inch of his life, but in the meantime, every one's meal is being ruined! And just a little FYI if this seems uncomfortably familiar to you, when this happens, other diners hardly ever blame your kid. We all blame YOU. The kid is three and obviously has no reason to believe that there will be consequences for his actions because you have given him no reason to believe that there will be consequences. I don't want anyone to beat their kids. I just want you to TALK to them! If that is not possible, then find a nice babysitter. If you were willing to spend the money to take little Johnny to the expensive restaurant, you might be able to enjoy the restaurant more if you were spending that money paying a responsible babysitter to keep him at home and get him to bed at a decent time.
Sorry, about the rant, but somebody had to say it! And things could be much worse, I could have told you to leave little Johnny in the car with the windows rolled down. Have good day!
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