I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C……
It wasn’t what I wanted to call my husband at that point. Myself, my husband and 9-year-old son were in a hire car, travelling 1100kms over a week to visit friends and family and attend a wedding. Before this, we had caught 3 flights over 2 days just to get from the remote location we call home.
So you can guess that everyone’s nerves were starting to fry. Mostly from having Master 9 asking constantly if he can have his ipad back and us saying no. We had already done this trip 10 months prior, it was still raw in our minds. So car games it was. Creativity on coming up with new games was low, however it was flowing when it came to I spy guesses.
Master 9 has autism and that definitely gets you thinking outside the box. He has won this game more than us. The one that got us before was “Companies”, as we were driving along the main strip through yet another town. Our mouths say “what a great one, mate!” but our eyes were rolling and I could feel my husbands eyes burning at me.
He wasn’t the only one in the car with creative guesses though, we took a leaf out of his book and started slamming each other with A for automobile, R for rubbish/real estate/ridges, L for letters, W for weeds, F for farm/fields. It comes to hints and you sit there blindly staring out to the middle of nowhere saying “there’s one, there’s another, there’s another”.
I knew I Spy was needing retirement when Master 9 tried to get us with O for oxygen and an argument erupted overseeing oxygen and someone being accused of cheating. In my own head, I was asking if we were there yet.
Another servo, another wing ding. Stretch the legs and call ahead to see if they need more milk, bread, beers. Back in the car. Determined not to break out the iPad so soon, I turned to Pinterest for more car game ideas. No service. Bugger. The iPad whinge happened again and I found myself sounding like my Dad, “back in my day….” Back in my day, we regularly had 12-hour car trips. My sister and I never had ipad’s. We slept, mostly on dirt roads lullabied by the corrugations. Staring out the window was our entertainment. “Look at this beautiful view” I was saying. It hadn’t changed for KM’s. Back to I-Spy it was.
The icing on the cake came on the stretch back up towards where we were attending a family wedding. A 5:30am start, knowing we had to be at the airport in 3.5 hours to pick up another 4 family members. The servo breaky, the child who said he was still full from last night’s dinner and of course the parents who didn’t pay attention to that and forced him to eat his bacon and egg burger. 15 minutes later, I heard it, the splash sound hitting the back of the seat in the hire car. Vomit everywhere and Master 9 saying “I told you I was full”. More eye-rolling. Lucky for us I had some cleaning wipes in the car, purchased purely because it was going to get me bonus points on my rewards card. A quick cold shower thanks to the water freshly purchased and a text ahead to say we were running late. We made it, an hour late and managed to squeeze 7 people, luggage and a baby seat in the hire car and thankly, all had a laugh after that. It was much needed.
Mrs F.
Mrs F lives with Hubby and Master 9 on a small deserted island in a remote community in the NT. After 9 years as a FIFO family, they’ve moved to be a Residential Family. The deserted island is home to many like-minded people who enjoy a game of golf with a sea view and plenty of fishing while occasionally go to work at the mine site.
image is with thanks to
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