The shipment finally arrived from Miami, but my excitement quickly turned to trepidation after a quick glance at my husband. I knew what was coming – and it wasn’t pretty.
A few weeks earlier I had ordered two “convertible” forward-facing car seats, one for my car and one for my husband’s, as my toddler had recently outgrown his rear-facing infant carrier.
Once the boxes were open, my husband reached in and pulled out the 47-page instruction booklet which could have easily passed for a flight manual written by a NASA engineer. He browsed through it briefly before throwing it back in the box in disgust.
You see, it’s one thing to accept not having a handyman husband, but it’s another to see him huffing and puffing and cursing under his breath while attempting to install something that is so vitally important to our child’s safety; and as the guilty party, I’ve pressured him to do so, despite his not being the least bit mechanically inclined.
If you are a parent reading this, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about because the makers of these car seats – or rather, the writers of these manuals – must derive some twisted pleasure, knowing full well that the average person could be driven to the brink of madness by their cryptic and incomprehensible instructions. (This also goes for those wicked Swedes and their evil flat-pack furniture.)
It’s bad enough that the manual is littered with large X’s circled in red, ominous disclaimers, and complicated diagrams with reference points from A to Z. Not only is it negative in its approach, but you require an instruction manual in order to read the instruction manual; just glancing at it drums up the secret fear which plagues every parent – that you are not going to be able to protect your child; perhaps, more to the point – if you install it incorrectly, you might kill or maim your precious little cargo.
And before you wonder, dear reader, why we didn’t seek help from the ever-trusted YouTube, I say to that: “Don’t you think we tried that already?” After combing through dozens of amateur videos (mostly smug moms with their toothy-grin toddlers posing as models), the lone professional one finally scrolls up, but the instructions are no clearer – and now you are condescendingly spoken to by a representative who fails to explain it in the detail you require, yet manages to magically install it perfectly in two minutes or less.
As my husband opened the door and went into the blazing sun to install both seats, he raised a valid point: “Why do we need the ‘safe-stop belt’ when the maximum speed limit on any given day in Cayman rarely exceeds 30 miles per hour!?” By the time our son is securely strapped in with his five-point harness, I’ll be unstrapping him 10 minutes later since the school run, grocery run, or any run in Cayman, for that matter, is usually accomplished within that amount of time. After all, these extra features are designed to survive high-speed accidents on frighteningly fast motorways (by Cayman standards, at least).
This got me thinking about my own childhood; like many who grew up in ‘60s and ‘70s, my childhood did not involve infant car seats. In fact, I don’t think they were even commonplace until the ‘80s. Back when we were kids, my dad didn’t even wear his seatbelt. I don’t remember many parents wearing theirs, either. I do recall, however, very long, hot car rides in our red Chevrolet Impala to visit my grandmother in Northern Ontario every summer.
One year, after yet another argument erupted between my two siblings and myself, and sensing my dad was tiring of his empty threat of “I’ll pull the car over!”, my eldest brother devised an ingenious method to restore peace in the vinyl-seated cruiser. Now looking back on it, I can’t believe my middle brother or I even fell for it, but once implemented, it became the norm for years to come – even the highlight of our long-haul car drives.
It did not involve electronics (there was no such thing as an iPhone, iPad, DVD, or other such things that make long car journeys with small children tolerable). It did not involve my parents; they had their own problems at the front end of the car, consulting their gigantic road map folded the wrong way and arguing about which way to turn while the radio station went in and out (mostly out, expect when the knob hit a dreaded country music station, and then it was as clear as islands in the stream). No. We didn’t need them. We were resourceful and smart kids.
Even though my eldest brother reached dictator status, my middle brother and I happily went along with the plan. Being the youngest, I really had no say in anything, anyway, so my protests would have gone completely unheard.
The system was simple: We all laid claim to a separate part of the back half of the vehicle. I got to lie across the top, just underneath the sloping rear window; the eldest, of course, got the back seat to himself and sprawled out accordingly; while my middle brother got the floor, hump and all.
I still remember the window’s horizontal lines brushing up against my nose and the warmth from the sun enveloping my skin as I stared up into the clouds and passing spruce trees. Since this was before the time of A/C, the windows would be rolled down just so in order to get the right amount of wind strength into the car without blowing me away. We would quietly and contentedly read a book or magazine in blissful silence, giving my parents a most welcome respite from our otherwise constant bickering.
Thankfully, we didn’t get into an accident. This system, as unsafe as it was, worked like a charm. Yes, it was reckless of my parents, but back then nobody did anything remotely safe – I do not recall helmets for even the most dangerous sports. There were no safety gates, no “baby proofing” the house, no baby monitors. The list goes on, and yet somehow we managed to survive.
As a society, we’ve become more technologically advanced, but we have also simultaneously created a culture of fear. We’re inadvertently encouraging children to be apprehensive and cautious instead of free and independent, and scared to make mistakes or change course when things go wrong. But what parent wants to take a chance on their child’s safety these days? What parent wants to be “that parent” who doesn’t protect their child properly? Not me, for sure.
Yet on the streets of Cayman, I often drive past cars with babies and toddlers sitting in the laps of their parents – in the front seat, no less – and sometimes even on mopeds. There is finally a law that forbids texting or talking on the phone while driving; perhaps it’s time now to make infant car seats a legal requirement as well.
When my husband came back an hour-and-a-half later, sweaty and miserable, he gave me a nod that it was done and simply asked me to double-check his handy work. Someday I will tell my son this story about my childhood and let him know that not only is he lucky to have a comfy car seat to ride in, but as an only child he also has the wonderful advantage of not being bossed around by anyone but his parents.
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