Want to feel young again…take years off your age?
Go on a road trip with your adult siblings. I guarantee you will start acting like a kid again. I discovered this several weeks ago traveling with my sister and brother.
I drove from Grand Marais to my sister’s home in Plymouth. Our younger brother flew in from LA, and we headed southwest on Highway 169 where we eventually skirted Sioux Falls and drove to the small town of Marion, South Dakota.
As the miles ticked off, slowly but surely we reverted to our childhood roles. Being the oldest, I found myself bossing my siblings around. “What are all those chiming noises?”
I turned from the steering wheel to complain as their smart phones continually pinged.
They ignored me, like always.
“We’re on a trip here people!” I exclaimed, turning back to the steering wheel. “You’re looking down at your phones while beautiful scenery floats past the windows.”
They mumbled something about “always yelling at us” and kept on texting.
However, their smart phone apps kept us from getting lost (the two of them always were smart alecks!) and we arrived safely at our destination.
A generous, kindhearted cousin shared her house with us. As we visited relatives and paid respects to our parents at the family cemetery, the long-ago roles of our childhood gained strength.
My sister and I teased our brother. “What possessed you to order cabbage rolls for lunch?” We heckled.
My brother (8 years my junior) and I picked on our middle-child sister. They ganged up and called my phone a “dumb phone.” Since I am one of five people in the upper Midwest who doesn’t own a smart phone, I shut up.
We also reminisced a lot, discovering a few antics we hadn’t admitted to earlier in our lives. “You climbed out of your window and dropped to the ground?”…
“Remember how mad Mom got when someone stole the beautiful Mexican flower pot you gave her? … You did what?”
When a cousin remarked that the household of our childhood must have really been something else, we chorused, “You have no idea.”
All in all, it was a good time, and we may have created a new tradition. Sitting in our hostess’s garden one late afternoon, my brother hauled out his guitar, and, with cicadas buzzing in the trees and a warm prairie breeze touching our faces, we sang tunes ranging from I’ll Fly Away to You Never Even Called Me By My Name and waved at people driving by.
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