Normally when I am in the car, I listen to the radio.  Often I keep it tuned to talk radio for the traffic and weather updates, unless there is too much yelling going on.  Then I switch over to the latest and greatest hits station, as long as they keep it clean.

The past couple car trips, I’ve been tuning in to something a little different.  My daughter has always had plenty to say; lately, however, her conversations have just been too hard to ignore.

My middle child sits in the back seat of our minivan all by herself.  Or so we thought.  It turns out she loves to fill up the extra seats with various imaginary friends, all of whom are loosely based on her actual friends.

This is the kind of conversation I’ve been tuning into lately (keep in mind that everything is spoken by the same person):
“These are my friends, Elizabeth, Austin and Caleb.   Tony is sitting here on my lap.” “Oh.  And who are these guys?” “Samuel and Bela.” “Who is your friend?”  “Kar…” “Kara?”  “Yeah.” “Dinga-binga-winga-ringa-linga-mooba-dooba-zinga-omali-bali.”  “Oh. Long name.” “Yeah (heh-heh).”  “They have a great big jumping thing at their house.  It’s so big it wouldn’t fit in here.”  “Oh.  What is it called?”  “It is a big . . . jump . . . jolla.  A big jump jolla.  It’s gigantic.” “Wow.”  And on and on it goes.

As you can imagine, conversations like this make the miles slip by, while easing my frustrations with the annoying drivers out there.  I’ll take this over talk radio any day.

Photo by Maciej Chojnacki