Road Trips

iPods changed my family's car trips forever.

I was ten years old when we rented a car in Arizona and drove around the Grand Canyon. Travelling through the look out points and desert, my sisters and I smushed in the back seat. We giggled, made up games, told stories and explored our relationship more than we had time to during the school year. I secretly looked forward to car trips because of those opportunities. The radio on was our background music. We let it slip our minds that Mom and Dad were in the seats in front of us and that they could easily hear us, allowing our games and stories to go to private places where only sisters are allowed. Places that are for sibling-ears only, we told secrets and showed our true emotions, said things we wouldn't usually say in front of our parents.

Travelling to my Grandparent's or Aunt's house had the same affect. The stories and games and talking with each other. It was as though there was a secret bubble inside the car that only we could enter and everyone outside the bubble didn't exist. It helped me become a better person and sister in my most formative years.

My sisters only had a few years of car rides like that before the iPod was created. I was sixteen and still looked forward to car rides together. That Christmas my sisters and I all received our first iPods, small nano iPods, we were far from the first in our friend circles to receive them though. Later that day we drove to our Grandparent's house for a gift exchange and I was looking forward to the hillarious joking that could take place, my sisters have seriously wry humors and side-splitting sarcasm. We got into the car, I left my iPod in the house anticipating the conversation but my sisters had their's in hand. I sat next to the window behind my father driving and my sisters put their ear buds in, listened to their music the entire car ride. There was no laughing, no conversation except small quips between my parents and I. I felt tears beginning at what I knew as the end of our car ride bonding.

Age fourteen, we went to Sanibel with a couple other families for spring break. My CDs and I were inseperable, I begged for a CD binder before vacation so I could bring all 250 CDs with me. Along with that blue vinyl binder came my walkman, adorned with stickers I had received from the doctor and larger headphones that covered my ears. We rode bikes on vacation and I kept my walkman with me, figuring out how to ride and hold it at the same time. It was only possible to listen to one CD at a time and I listened to it straight through - the way the artist intended it - so far from how music is listened to now. If I wanted to listen to another CD, I had to figure out how to bring it with me. My walkman didn't fit in my pocket, it occupied one hand or a tight shorts pocket.

It still disappoints me when, in the car or taking a walk, my sisters bring their iPods and I refuse to do the same. So two of us have a soundtrack and I listen to the sounds around me, hoping they will catch on some day that all I want to hear are their jokes and laughter.