The Lost Art of Road Trip Ingenuity: From DVDs to PS3s

How We Entertained Ourselves on the Road Before iPads Took Over

When I was around 8 or 9 years old, my dad picked me up from summer camp in our Ford Explorer, which was a couple of years old. To my delight, I discovered a built-in DVD player installed on the car’s ceiling. It had a tiny, maybe 7-inch screen and a disc drive that sat under the middle seat.

We spent most weekends from October through March driving about 2 hours to various parts of St. Louis where my brother and I would play hockey. Up until this point, we had been using a portable DVD player and - when I got creative - I even hooked up my dad’s super-old antenna TV (maybe a 4-inch screen?) to the N64 and played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater in the 3rd row. Those truly were the days.

We used the DVD player until I was about 14.  The craziest thing my brother and I ever did was in 2007 when Rock Band had just come out. My brother and I set up a PS3 in the backseat, complete with the drum kit and guitar. The power draw from all the equipment actually caused the inverter to overheat several times, and I doubt I ever fully thanked my parents for their patience during that trip.

That same trip coincided with the Mizzou vs. Kansas football game, where Mizzou played against top-ranked Kansas. Mizzou won, so the Rock Band playing in the back seat was quickly forgotten. (Oklahoma would later beat Mizzou in the Big 12 Championship, causing Mizzou to not be selected for a BCS bowl game, but no one’s bitter about that 20 years later, so let’s move on.)

DVD players and built in screens gave way to iPod videos (or in our case iRivers because we avoided Apple products like the plague.) Now we all just hand our kids iPads, which don’t require power inverters or implanted screens in our car ceilings.

However, I worry that today’s ease of use might cause kids to miss out on the creativity we used to employ to entertain ourselves on road trips. My goal is to make sure my kids don’t become complacent. Yes, certain things are a lot easier than 20 years ago, but that doesn’t mean Dad’s going to do all of them. I don’t have any rules for this yet. The main tactic I’ve used so far is when my son wants to play a game or watch something, I’ll let him try it first. And after I’ve seen him do it successfully, I won’t do it for him anymore.

I’ve talked to a handful of people a generation ahead of me at work who say their kids are completely helpless with this stuff. I hope to instill the same level of curiosity I had so my kids learn, but also so they can have some of these memories too.