Minivan Accessories

Posted by Jennifer W. Miner Oct 23, 2006

Life sometimes goes by so fast, that it's shocking when we take a step back and realize how much we've changed. One moment we're bar-hopping with our friends, checking out the guys, running interference when a creepy one hits on the hottest one of us, laughing about it afterwards. Then we wake up one day to find we're driving a minivan loaded with children, at least two of which are ours. School, violin lessons, soccer practice. Dustbuster to suck up the Fritos crumbs in the back, along with dog hair and caked mud that fell from cleats. How did we ever come to this? And, how can we possibly maintain a vestige of the cool we once had, tooting around in our Sienna, with tracks from High School Musical in perpetual rotation?

There are some high-tech gadgets and gizmos that, installed in a family minivan, go a long way in raising its coolness quotient. When the kids are in the back for a long road trip, the ceiling-mounted DVD player is indispensable. A GPS for high-tech directions and routes. Satellite radio, like Sirius, helps. Well, assuming it's tuned to a hip station like Classic Vinyl. I've heard some amazing music from this channel; rare tracks from The Who, Joni Mitchell, Creedence, Rolling Stones, and Neil (Young, not Diamond. Please). Not a high school musical in sight. Family travel is made easier, if not exactly brought to the heights of hipness, with the right accessories.

And what do I do, to desperately cling to the last shred of cool as it tries to slip through my aging fingers? Well, my kids don't take soccer, for one. No soccer mom, I! Two, I've tossed the kiddie music CD's in favor of gradually introducing them to my preferred music - it helps that my eldest has decided the Beatles are a "boy band."

And, honestly... I don't drive a minivan. But that dusty Volvo wagon, the one with lost homework and abandoned art projects on the third-row seats? That's only the coolest station wagon in suburbia, dude. Don't you dare tell this old lady otherwise.