Lovebug

I was traveling recently in a van with a contingent of youths in the back. One was hammering something while another was kicking the back of my seat.

The mother, in the front passenger seat, leaned back beyond my row to suggest to the kids they play “Love Bug.”

What a blast from the past. I loved that game. For those who don’t remember or never played, you are challenged to watch traffic until you spot a VW Beetle. Then you point, shout “Love Bug” and slug the other player hard in the shoulder.

I loved that last part. Except my sister would argue she’d seen it first and slug me back. She was bigger.

I never exactly understood the purpose of the game, since no one seemed to win. And why would Mom countenance the slugging and shouting?

Then my sister and I became aunts. And, one time when we had our nephews in the back of her car, we understood. Keep them busy, otherwise occupied.

We’re not talking Travel Yahtzee here. It must have some promise of kid-on-kid violence, though that can still be kept under control.

And Mary and I came up with an even better version for our purposes: Karmann Ghia.

Sitting in the passenger seat, it was my job to lean back and suggest they search for Karmann Ghias in traffic. Cars passed for a half an hour before we heard from the back seat.

“Um, what’s a Karmann Ghia?”

“You don’t know (dig at male car pride)? I’ll let you know as soon as I spot one. Who do I get to slug?”

Silence. Blissful silence.

From this blast from the past came an urge to look up online what’s new in backseat car games. There are such sites. Family.go.com has word, number and pit stop games. Let me share a few:

• Eating an Alphabet
Let your half-starved brood describe how hungry they are in this game, best played about half an hour before you make a pit stop for food. This version of the "I'm Packing for a Picnic" game begins when you announce "I'm so hungry I could eat an aviator" ("alligator," or "apple").

•
Crazy Menu. On a paper restaurant menu, take turns crossing out key words. Then have your kids read aloud the new and often grotesque combinations they've created. Anyone for Pepperoni Cake with Strawberry Lettuce?

• Raindrop Race. On a rainy day, each player traces the course of a raindrop down the car window. The first drop to reach the bottom wins.

Now, in my view, the next one is the least likely to be considered fun and games by the younguns

• Billboard Poetry. Take turns picking out four words from road signs. Give the words to the other players who have 1 minute to turn the words into a four-line, rhyming poem using one of the chosen words per line.

There are, amazingly, other sites. Have fun and drive safely this vacation season.

 I still want to slug my sister.

Dogs vs gators

There was the time my sister, Liz, and her best friend, Chris visited me while I was working with the Lake City Reporter in Florida.

Chris wanted to see alligators.

Now, as a University of Florida Gator, (class of 19##) I’d seen plenty of them. I’d spent most of my three years at the college living at Hume Hall, which was at the far edge of the campus. It also had a nice swath of grassyness between it and a pond, which was more like a lake, but not big enough.  It was a pondish lake.

And it was fed by a spillway from Lake Alice, an alligator preserve. So alligators would spill over as well into the pondish lake.

Now, those of us in Hume Hall knew not to swim in the pondish lake. We’d lie in the sun or play flag football on the grassy area between.

But then there were those two instances. A man had brought his mid-sized dog to use the grassy area and play Frisbee. It was a warm day, so the man apparently decided to cool off his dog by having him fetch the Frisbee from the pondish lake.

Games stopped. Those of us sunning stood and watched as there was a thrashing and churning in the water of the pondish lake. Thankfully, whatever happened happened under water. But neither the dog nor the Frisbee returned.

Not more than a few weeks later, another man, with a Labrador, was showing how his dog could catch a Frisbee. And then he turned to throw the disc into the pondish lake. Games stopped. Those of us sunning stood and we all screamed a universal “NO.”

It was too late.

So when Chris said she wanted to see alligators, I dismissed those sad alligator farms. She wants to see alligators? Dog eating alligators in the wild?

We went to Lake Alice.

Having seen what alligators can do, I stayed back by the car. Liz and Chris joined a couple with their young son on the tip of a spit of land that stuck out into Lake Alice. The little boy was armed with marshmallows and, tossing them in the water, was attracting quite a few gators.

I was tempted to tell them that these were not pigeons in the park, but dog eating carnivores.

And then this bull alligator, with a head the size of a Buick, slopped out of the lake and crawled up behind them, blocking my sister’s and the others way back to safety.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I discovered myself on the hood of the car, pounding on it, waving madly and shouting … instructions.

Chris turned and waved back.

It’s strange the stuff that goes through your mind at a time like this. I’m on the hood of a car. It’s not mine. “Holy crap! They’ve got the keys, and I’m not going after them.”

You see, alligators can run 30 miles an hour in spurts. He didn’t need to run, spurt or otherwise. He just needed to turn his head.

Which led to the next thought: “What am I going to tell Mom?”

Ring: “Mom? Yeah, Liz was eaten by a gator. No, a real alligator. Do you have Chris’s mother, uh, Eunice’s phone number?”

Thankfully, the beamish boy seemed to pick up on my signals and grabbed a handful of his marshmallows and tossed them into the water behind the living Buick, who slowly turned and slopped back in the water to get the floating treats.

The adults caught a clue, since by now I was on the roof of the car and making dents. And I thankfully never had to call Eunice.