Donkey Punch Buggy

The other day I was driving home from work and caught sight of a Volkswagen Beetle. Not the new-fangled iMac looking one, but an old school egg-beater engine in the back model.

It caught me off guard because I realized it had been ages since I had actually seen one. Growing up we had a few because my mother had an affinity for them and they were pretty easy to maintain. I personally shared my dad's love of big cars so I never really saw the appeal of the bug -- but that doesn't mean I didn't know how to spot one when they were driving down the road.

Because back before the days of DVD players hanging from the ceiling, iPods for your kids, or hand-held videogames there was really only one effective way to control the behavior of boisterous children inside of a car:

Punch Buggy.

You probably played it too -- the car game where you scan the road around you looking for a VW Bug, because if you see one and call it out it gives you the right to punch your brother in the arm. Of course my mother had a thing about modifying things like that, so what my little brother and I originally played was called "bug hunt" -- where the goal was to see who could count the most bugs while we were on the road.

It sounds kinda silly, but it would literally tie us up for hours. The other car game we played the crap out of was Alphabet, where each player looked at billboards and road signs looking for words that started with specific letters to see who could get from A to Z the fastest. So you'd start off with something like "Rest Area 15 Miles" for A, and then "Come to Daytona Beach This Summer" for B -- and so on until you got through all 26 letters.

You'd blast pretty quickly through the first few stages, but then you'd hit something difficult like "Q" (remember, the word has to start with the letter, it can't just have it inside) and you could literally go for hours searching for the right word. Of course once you found it things turned into a total death race to see who could get to the letter "Z" first.

The wars we would have in the backseat over this game were nothing short of epic.

You wonder if parents still do these things on long trips. Especially since there are so many technological toys out there designed to engage and distract people while you drive. My son likes music and cartoons (go figure) so we usually kill time singing or re-enacting scenes from our favorite shows.

You haven't really lived until you've heard a seven-year old act out choice scenes from Ren and Stimpy.

Of course kids aren't the only ones who get bored on long trips. I can remember all sorts of road trips with buddies and girlfriends where the miles would get to the point where something had to be done to pass the time. Being all I knew, I'd always suggest alphabet or bug hunt (which is how I discovered that I had been missing out on the entire "punching" aspect of the game, which resulted in me getting two punches for each bug seen in an effort to "catch me up" for missed punches from my childhood). Of course, the games don't really work as well when you have two competitive adults playing and trying to one up each other -- meaning alphabet games were completed in lightning time (here's a hint -- the passenger always wins). Plus with the lack of VW bugs on the road, punch buggy isn't really effective anymore.

So what we sometimes did was invent adult car games to pass the time. Instead of alphabet, you played "dirty alphabet" -- which worked the same as regular alphabet except that when you found the letter, you had to give the name of a sex act that started with the same letter.

"Drive-Thru open 24 hours for D -- as in Dirty Sanchez"

Another favorite (especially on long trips with someone of the opposite sex you were really into) was to buy a copy of Penthouse Forum -- the little magazine filled with so called "letters" from normal people divulging their wildest sexual experiences. Then whoever wasn't driving had to read one of the letters in the most ridiculous fake voice they could come up with -- which meant the driver had to listen to the story of the unexpected threesome some guy had recited by Daffy Duck, ET, or Mickey Mouse.

I'm not that great at impressions, but I'm lucky to be alive considering the kind of driving hazards that were created when someone heard the way a pornographic story could sound when I read them as Charles Nelson Reilly.

It's been a while since I've taken a long car trip where I could do something like that, but if the opportunity ever comes up again I just heard about a new game that might be good for a couple of laughs. Here's how you play -- while you're driving around look at the cars around you. Look for interesting model names. Then when you find a good one, announce it to the rest of the people in the car --

Except instead of saying what company made the car (Ford, Nissan, etc.) you substitute the word anal.

For example -- this morning when I got to work I parked my car between an Anal Excursion and a brown Anal Escape. Then as I was walking to the door I saw one of my coworkers driving off in his Anal Ranger.

And sure, you're turning your nose up while you're reading this -- but just wait until you're driving home from work this afternoon and find yourself a stoplight behind a Ford Probe or a Dodge Ram. Just see if you can keep that thought out of your mind.

Besides -- it's fun!

So get out on the roads this weekend, take a little trip to the coast. If you've got kids, shut off the DVDs for a while and make them turn off the headphones for a few miles. Take the time to play a game or two, see if it brings you just a little bit closer together. Because in these times of crumbling family values and an ever-increasing generation gap -- maybe what we all need is a little game of Anal Odyssey.

Happy Motoring!

[Listening to:   Eddie Cochran – "Twenty Flight Rock" ]