Day 127–The Links of Childhood Survival

Just ordinary Discovery Toy links you are thinking to yourself. A fun toy to play with. An educational toy.

No, these are the links that saved my traveling sanity and the progeny’s lives.

You know when you take a long car trip (which we did a lot when the progeny were younger) and your children constantly ask you…..

When are we going to get there? (for the TEN THOUSANDTH TIME)

And you think that if you actually have to answer that question ONE. MORE. TIME. you are going to jump right into the back seat and bring some well deserved justice into your life.

Well, with three progeny that question was asked A LOT. And I was just about at my parental breaking point when it occurred to me that they just needed something visual to tell them. Something that I could just hold up and they could figure it out themselves without me having to use my angry words.

And if there was some math and counting involved all the better.

So when we would start out on our trip I would make sure that I had with me a chain, made of these links, with enough links to represent the number of hours that it would take us to get to our destination.

And when they would ask the dreaded question, I would just hold up the chain for them to count the links. No words were necessary on my part. With each hour that passed I would take a link off so that the count was correct.

When are we getting there?

Hold up the chain.

When are we getting there?

Hold up the chain.

And that is how I retained my sanity and the progeny retained their lives.

It was a good system.