Rage Against the Minivan...er, Machine

Want to get everyone on Facebook riled up?

Say you're never going to get a minivan.

Last week, I watched "Parenthood" (are you watching that show? If not, you should. SO good.), and on it, Jasmine was trying to convince Crosby that they needed to get a minivan. Crosby, who I have identified with more often this season than I'd like to admit, was repulsed by the idea, and spent most of the episode vehemently against it.  That is, until the very end of the episode, when he was able to drive an entire band home after a drunken night out, wherein he decided the minivan was a great purchase.

I went onto Facebook and declared Crosby a traitor.

See, in our house, we will NEVER have a minivan. And I am proud to announce that declaration to the public. I will stand on a pedestal, shout it from the rooftops, whatever it takes to show how serious I am about it.

Every time I happen to mention we will never have one, someone says, "oh, just wait" (there's that phrase again).  "Don't go saying things like that until you have 2-3 more kids." or "Ha. We'll see."

What these poor, misguided people don't fully comprehend is who they are talking to.  When I say I will never get one, I really and truly mean I will NEVER. GET. ONE.

I stand by my principles. I do not waver. I do not yield. Especially when my pride is on the line. Let me give you an example.

When we moved into our newly built home in the summer between my 2nd and 3rd grade year, I was so excited to be able to pick out the carpet and wallpaper colors for my room. After going through books upon books of wallpaper samples (does anyone else remember getting to take those home from the store?), my mom basically declared all my choices too juvenile, saying that I would grow out of what I had chosen really quickly. She thought I should go with a more "mature" color palette and pattern for the floor and the walls.  Now, when I was a kid, I was 1000% pure tomboy.  I lived in my knockoff Umbros and my imitation Adidas Sambas. My favorite colors were blue and green. I would rather have been caught dead than wear a dress--which made Sundays pretty much the worst ever in terms of wardrobe when you go to a dresses-on-Sunday kind of church.  So when my mom picked out rose-colored carpet and large variations-of-pink posies wallpaper, I cried and wailed. I'm pretty sure there was gnashing of teeth involved. The wallpaper looked like a hideous Laura Ashley print from the early 90s--or at least something that you would find on a tapestry in some creepy Sister Wives house in Utah. It was pretty much the most awful option that I could have ever been given for a room.  I vowed then and there that I would NEVER forgive my mom for that one.

She said, "Just wait."  She said, "You'll love it one day soon, I promise."  But by George, I had my righteous, holy anger, and there was no way on God's green Earth I was ever going to like that wallpaper and nasty carpet.

It was always funny when friends would come over and ask to see my room, because they were taken aback when they saw all the pink. "*This* is your room?" they would ask, with a sense of wonder. By the time middle school came around, I started taking to covering as much of the walls as possible with various posters (the 1992 US Men's Basketball Team, Steven Curtis Chapman, and a huge soccer poster were 3 that I remember specifically) and as much other stuff as possible. And though I couldn't do anything about the carpet, I rebelled by keeping my floor as covered with crap as possible so that I couldn't see the awful Pepto-Bismol color.

I moved to college still hating that darn wallpaper.  Only when I lived in China after graduation, and my parents decided to convert my old room into a guest room, did the wallpaper come down.  Did you catch that? They only changed the paper after I moved away!  Grr....  Anyways, I hated that wallpaper abomination every single day that it existed in my room, and I never once wavered in my undying detestation of it.

That whole story is a perfect illustration of why I will never get a minivan, and why all those people who tell me that I'll change my mind about it will just have to understand that it will never be so.

So why all the hate?  After all, it's just a car, right?  Yes, it's just a car. But everyone has something like this, right? A stance on an issue that you will not budge from. For some people, they are staunch about their nutrition. For some, it's politics. For some, it's a moral standard, or a conspiracy theory, or scientific truth, or Mac vs. PC. My point is, everyone has something that they have a super-strong opinion about. This is mine. Silly? Probably. But it is what it is.

So without further ado, here is my list. My (non-exhaustive, and in no particular order) list of:

Why I Will Never Get A Minivan

1. I will never have trouble finding which car is mine when picking up my kids at school.
2. My kids will have to learn to consolidate and organize their crap, just like I have to.
3. They rent portable DVD players for the car. I don't need them magically built in for everyday use. Vacations, yes. Zombify those kids for the 18-hour drive to Disney. But other than that, they'll be fine.
4. I survived my whole childhood without a minivan, why can't my kids?
5. I will NOT have a dirty car all the time, with crap spilling out of the doors every time they open. This is my #1 pet peeve of minivans. Have you ever, other than in a showroom, seen a clean minivan??
6. No matter how many swagger wagon videos you make, minivans have never been, nor will they ever be cool to anyone other than other parents.  I have a very short list of requirements for a vehicle. "Cool looking" is one of them.
7. The minivan is just a step down from an RV. An RV is way more cool. So why not just get an RV?
8. In Los Angeles, minivan owners have to park really far away from their destination, because you can't get anyone in or out of the car because the parking spaces are extremely narrow. Our friend Link has to put the nose of the van in the parking space, let his kids out, then pull in the rest of the way, otherwise his kids can't get out of the van.
9. If you have so much extra space in your car that you are able to misplace entire cups filled with milk, which then curdle in the heat and make your entire car smell for months like someone has died in it, then you have too much space.
10. Because I have my principles.