You waited a long time.
Cruising backwards in your baby seat, strapped into your toddler chair, sharing the bench with your little brother on those long drives downtown, you spent years putting up with child locks, bad views, and barf bags.
So when you finally get to ride in the front seat you deserve a big congratulations.
You just got promoted to adult.
AWESOME!
This post is 2 of 1 2 3 4 5 for Kids Week!
Photo from: here
AWESOME for kid, but not so AWESOME for the parent!
I remember me and my brother fighting each ride who is going to seat in the front seat.
The one who shouted first “I’m seating in the front” got the privilege…..
Yeah we didn’t have “shotgun”back then.
Yes yes yes!!!
Graduating to the front seat was so exciting! You finally felt like a big kid. I actually remember the very first time I rode in the front … it was a big deal to me! Good times. :)
I love Kids Week!
I was always stuck in the middle in the backseat. I was kid #3 so my time in the front seat came a little late. I only got to ride in the front when it was just me and mom out, and I loved it.
Yeah, half the time my sister and I would argue so severely over who got the front that my mom would banish us both to the back. So when it was just me and an adult, it was a guaranteed front seat ride. :D
When I was a kid, the car rides worked out as follows: Front: Dad (driving) my oldest sister, and my oldest brother.
Back: My mom, my other sister (often sitting on the floor due to car sickness), me, and my little brother (on mom’s lap).
Then when we got too big to fit the four of us in the back, we got a van. Not a “minivan” like they have today. A van van. With bench seats and orange curtains. I’m not sure I ever got to ride in the front!
‘A van van’, the best kind of van! :) I’m the oldest of just two, so I got my front seat time waaay before my sister did. :D
Ha! “a van van” is a great term – it instantly made clearer what you were talking about.. I wonder what other words that would work for.
I mean, saying that I’m typing on a “keyboard keyboard” doesn’t make anything clearer..
I guess it works pretty well with adjectives.. For example, my wife isn’t just regular short. She’s short short..
She’s also covered in a Nutella snuggie, but that’s besides the point.
btw: Sorry I’ve been MIA guys.. I’ve missed you!
(It was budget season at work, which is the equivalent of being sucked into a black hole for a few weeks.. but less fun)
No excuses — it’s conference week at school and I was there for 14 hours today!
Ok … fine. I guess I’ll accept your excuse. I’m pretty sure that “budget season” is probably way more intense than parent-teacher conferences. :) Especially if it’s less fun than being sucked into a black hole.
Anyway, we missed you, too!
NUTELLA SNUGGIE!
And she doesn’t just like that Snuggie … she LIKE likes it.
We didn’t have a “van van.” We did have the mini van, but I remember my oldest brother’s first car….. its was an orange Pinto. I did get to ride in the front seat in that a few times to the bus stop.
I had a friend whose parents had a “van van” … it had curtains, too, and two big crazy captain’s chairs in the middle that swiveled around to face the bench seat in the back. I’d never seen such a thing. It blew my mind.
Hehe I’m a third child too, so I spent my lifee in that middle seat. But luckily when only one parent was driving, whoever dressed the fastest got the front seat! And it was awesome! Especially since I always had help dressing! Then those stupid child safety laws came into play, and I didn’t see a front seat again till my older brothers both left for college!
i want to sit at the back again:)
I CALL SHOTGUN!
Calling it doesn’t work when your older brothers can beat you up over it
What?? They didn’t respect the shotgun call? that’s just wrong!
Bekah – you need to send this to your older brothers and let them know that they violated several rules of Shotgun..
http://www.shotgunrules.com/
Ha! That’s great. They broke all those rules.
Most of the time when I called it, crossing my fingers that I will actually make it, I’d have the door open ready to get in..and in that split second they would come out of nowhere and plop their happy butt in my called seat.
No amount of whining, foot stomping, or trying to pull them out did any good.
I don’t know if it’s the exact same ones, but back in high school my friend Gary printed a copy of some “shotgun rules” that we kept in my car (for some reason, I was almost always the one who drove … usually because my car was the only one clean enough to accommodate passengers). Those rules got us through some tough front seat vs. back seat disputes.
Have you told us about your clean car, vs. your friends dirty cars before? I think I remember some epic story about a pretty ridiculously gross car before, and I seem to it remember coming from you.
YES! My friend left a half-eaten pint of Ben and Jerry’s in her disgusting trunk from November to like February or March! Winter’s chilliness preserved it, but once it started warming up outside, oh goodness. Ewwwwwww.
Points for you for remembering! :)
I remember when I got promoted to the front seat. What a joy it was to be able to see through the windshield, roll the windows down all the way, and not get carsick in the enclosed backseat. Very awesome!
The first time you get to drive a car is definitely more awesome!!!!!
Especially if the car is a Jeep. Then you really feel powerful.
both my brother and i used to get car sick in the back and would try to use that as an excuse to get the front seat, he usually won the arguement because he was older. so yes getting shotgun is awesome.
Ha! I have a friend who does this … still. She claims the excuse of carsickness anytime she even ALMOST has to ride in the back. Hmph.
What’s better – is riding in the front seat of your own car when your friend is driving you somewhere. :]
You get to relax in the luxuries of your own vehicle without worrying (too much) about whats going on on the road. You can take the smooth ride and just go with it!
It’s so bizarre to ride in the passenger seat of your own car, though! It’s a whole different experience … I usually just feel out of control, like I’d rather be driving.
Totally agree.. but I think I sometimes feel like this as a passenger in general..
I sometimes compare it to watching someone else play tetris.. you know, they may still be good at tetris, but I find it really difficult to watch, because I constantly see things that I’d do differently.. (No! The long line should go over on the left!)
Well, driving is sort of the same way.. “hmm.. I wouldn’t drive so close to that car in front of me.. and I probably wouldn’t still be gunning the gas as I’m approaching the stop sign, etc..”
That’s a perfect comparison! I’d almost always rather be driving — whether it’s my own car (ESPECIALLY my own car) or not. I feel that I’m a very efficient driver and it makes me crazy to ride with someone who 1) constantly needs directions on how to get where we’re going, 2) takes a totally inefficient and traffic-jammed route when it could have been avoided, and/or 3) is just a bad driver in general. You can’t help but think backseat-driver thoughts.
Well, I never had a toddler chair, I just sat in the middle row of Mom’s minivan. I don’t remember the first time I sat in the front, but I assure you that it was probably definitely AWESOME.
I remember the day well. Not so much because I got promoted to the front seat but because my mom, who was driving, and who is VERY afraid of spiders, discovered a spider climbing up the inside of the windshield and across the celing right above her. As we were driving through a busy intersection.
It’s okay, nobody was hurt. It was just really, really funny.
So many memories just came back! Thanks for the reminder of something that was (and in memory still is) quite awesome.
My mom always lied and told me that I wasn’t allowed to ride in the front until I was 5 because if I rode in the front before then she’d get in trouble and that she needed to call a phone number first to ask if it was ok that I ride in the front. I didn’t care and asked her every single day for about a year if she had called yet. When I finally got to ride shotgun I was SO excited. :)
Woah, you got to ride shotgun when you were 5? I was kept in the backseat until I was 12!
Probably had something to do with the fact that I asked my mom everyday. And that I was freakishly tall as a child so was bigger than the average 5 year old!
Hehe I got to ride in the front seeat when I was five too, but that’s cause we had an old car with no passengers airbags, after we got a new car I wasn’t allowed back in till I was 12, And I had older brothers so, not very often even then!
So awesome, at least for the oldest child (which I happen to be). Whenever I go home from school my dad, my sister and I got somewhere as a family, she’ll invariably climb into the back seat still, even though she’s almost 18. I ask her if she wants to sit in the front, but she says no.
agreed! my older brother always got front seat because 1. i was youngest and 2. i was waaay too small. to this day i sit in the front seat of some cars that don’t recognize i’m there & turn the airbag off… & i’m 20. ahaha :)
I never fought. I’m a reader, so I always chose the back seat so I could read undisturbed. This was beneficial to my parents (who didn’t have to hear the arguments) and to my sister (who always rode in the front seat.)
However, it was NOT beneficial to me… LOL. I’m the oldest, and when started driving, I didn’t know how to get ANYWHERE in our small town. I’d never paid attention, I was in the backseat reading!
In fact, the first time I drove my sister and her friend from practice, they played a joke and gave me directions that took me all over town. By the time we got home, we were an hour late. Imagine my mom – this was pre-cell phone, a 16 year old picking up a two 13 year-olds, one of which belonged to another person… she was SCARED. We were greeted with, “WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?” I immediately started crying.
My sister did own up to the trick, and she got in trouble, but I got a LONG lecture about how I needed to learn how to get around town if I expected to continue driving.
This is indeed awesome.
This really made me think back to my first front seat ride.
I was the 10-year-old child of overbearing, overprotecting parents. They insisted on keeping me in a car seat for the first 6 years of my life. When I finally got promoted to sitting on the actual seat I was pretty excited, but the front seat tantalized me. A few days after my 10th birthday, my mother had to run to the gas station. She insisted that I come with her, and I walked to the back door, expecting a boring ride. Suddenly, my mother says “Why don’t you come sit up front?” My smile was huge, and it was the best ride of my life.
As you would say, AWESOME!
good old times! I read the book last month and I really like to read this blog because it shows that most awesome things are international: different cultures with awesome experiences to share.
I grew up in an age when parents were permitted to determine the best interests of their child, rather than having the government dictate to them what they must do. In that sense, today’s parents are really just children themselves.
I rode in the front seat from my first moments of life. I have never experienced a time when I was relegated to the back seat by government authority. That time may yet come.
I pity those of you for whom this item is a good memory. You will never be allowed to grow up.
There were no seat belts when I was growing up. I remember my Grampa taking about 10 kid-cousins to the candy store in the back of his Mercury pick-up truck. I was the youngest and small in comparison, so when he said I HAD to ride up front with him for safety, I knew he cared! I was maybe 4 and I still recall feeling awesome.
Thank you for useful information. Waiting for new posts.