The dreaded minivan. This is the last thing any girl in her twenties wants to call her own. Your car is symbolic of your personlity, and there are so many different makes and models out there that you can always find something to fit the image you want to portray. Want to be seen as sporadic and sassy? Drive a Mustang. Want to highlight your quirks and individuality? Drive a MINI Cooper or a Volkswagen Beetle. Concerned others don't see you as practical? Switch to any of the sedans on the market. And then there's the minivan. That poor, poor minivan. It screams, "Please take me out of my 'uncool' misery!" or "How many kids can you cram in me today?" I tried ... Lord knows I tried ... to think of any other suitable car options for someone with triplets. But despite my valiant efforts, the practicality of the minivan won out and one day I found myself driving one off of the car lot and waving goodbye to my youth for good.
I moped around for a few months and made faces of disgust at Mr. Minivan whenever I caught a glimpse of him out my front window. He would just sit there and wink back with his power sliding doors that promised oh-so-much convenience to a triplet mom. I shunned his advances (even though the power doors WERE very helpful) and played hard to get, as most girls do. No way was this minivan going to win me over with some fancy electronics and multitudes of cup holders. No sir, I wasn't going to budge until he showed me something that I couldn't get anywhere else.
And then the magic happened. It wasn't just one thing, it was a combination that hit me cold and hard in the face one day as I was driving. We were taking a longer trip and I had just switched on the Elmo DVD to keep the kids entertained. As I looked in my rear view mirror and saw them all snacking happily in their car seats, drinks placed neatly in their perfectly placed individual cup holders while I turned up the DVD with the volume controls located on the steering wheel, I had a moment of revelation. So Mr. Minivan wasn't cool to look at and didn't scream, "look at me, I've still got it!" I couldn't put his top down and let the sun shine on my shoulders while I drove around listening to the latest top 40 hits. But he did offer me leather seats, a 6 CD disc changer, a DVD player, climate control and cup holders as far as the eye could see. And you know what? That's all this girl really needed to be happy. So I proceeded to roll down the windows and the kids and I sang "Rubber Ducky" at the top of our lungs with the wind blowing through our hair as we drove down the highway. From that day on Mr. Minivan and I have had an inseparable partnership that no one will ever be able to understand or duplicate. Sure, I still look at all those fancy, cool cars, but, in the end, Mr. Minivan and I know where my heart truly lies.
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