I don’t know about you, but I think that my child makes a far slicker Horatio Caine than does David Caruso, who, let’s face it, is a hack. But CBS doesn’t care if my baby is an undiscovered Horatio Cane-impersonating genius, because CBS hates babies. Canadian babies, mostly, but also just babies, as a class, because they won’t let babies or Canadians – and certainly not Canadian babies – enter their Horatio Caine impersonation contest, which, seriously, is a crime against babies and also lovers of CSI Miami and anybody who writes baby-centric Horatio Caine fanfic. This is an outrage, you guys.

I might think that this was just a plot originated by David Caruso, who is very probably threatened by the sunglasses-doffing slicksters of tomorrow, one of whom might replace him one day, or get their own CSI spin-off, CSI: Playgroup, which would almost certainly be a ratings blockbuster, so you could see why he’d want to keep the young ones off his turf. So, yeah, I might think that, but isn’t CBS making a lot of dodgy calls about babies and baby-related issues these days, you know, what with their whole marketing love affair with anti-reproductive rights groups and all? I mean, sure, it’s hard to make the case that Focus On The Family, who get to have their anti-abortion ads run during the Super Bowl, are anti-baby – anti-choice, sure, but that’s not quite the same thing, even if the people whose choices they’re restricting used to be babies, and shouldn’t the women who used to be babies have choice? (which, I know, the standard anti-choice line is don’t the babies get a choice? which is mad loaded but not the primary topic of concern here and really, anyway, now’s not the time to debate baby vs. fetus, even if I do think that Horatio Caine would have some strongly worded and sternly delivered opinions about that, which would be interesting to hear, if only to find out at which point in the debate he would punctuate his remarks by removing his sunglasses) – but still, it seems that CBS only likes babies if they’re fetuses or if they’re not babies at all but grown-up people who are ‘over the age of 18 and residents of the United States of America.’ I call shenanigans.

Because, seriously. My baby would so totally have won their Horatio Caine impersonation contest if CBS weren’t all ageist and anti-baby and David Caruso weren’t such an insecure dork.

Pass it on.

(PS: Please keep tweeting and linking and forwarding our open letter against non-consensual nether-probing, which, let’s face it, Horatio Caine would never stand for. >>> *screeching-guitar-shred* >>> WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN.)

It was a mother duck and her three baby ducks, and I was pretty sure that we were going to kill them.

It wasn’t so much the impending massacre that made me scream. Nor was it the fact that the baby ducks – tiny mottled bundles of matted fluff – were so adorable. I’ve seen dead animals before. I’ve seen dead baby animals before. Hell, I’m pretty sure that I’ve eaten dead baby animals. No, it was the fact that it was a mother and her babies – that we were about to kill a mother! and her babies! – that made me scream. At the top of my lungs. With my arms flung over my head and my eyes squeezed shut.

Katie screamed too, of course. The fact that there was a giant truck bearing down on our vehicle from the right – thereby preventing Katie from swerving to avoid the Duckersons – made things worse. It was us and our children, or Mrs. Duckerson and her children. Katie chose us. Which, in retrospect, seems like the right decision. Survival of the fittest-who-are-driving-a-big-assed-SUV and all.

But it was a mother and her babies out on some misbegotten adventure, and as mothers out on their own misbegotten adventure with their own babies, the symbolism of what seemed to be their horrible end was just a little much for us to bear. And so we screamed. And kept screaming even after it became clear that somehow, miraculously, they had gone right under the vehicle and out the back end without ever even having a feather ruffled by the tires. Because, seriously, as portents go, that one was kind of confusing. Did the near-massacre mean that our moms-and-kids road-trip was doomed? Or did the averted disaster mean that we’d be fine? Were we going to get literally or figuratively shmooshed on this trip, or would angels divert the giant spinning tires of fate away from our feathers?

We didn’t know, so we just kept screaming.

*******

The girls, of course, wanted to know why we were screaming, and our reflections on fate and God and death were a bit complicated to explain, so we narrowed it down to death, which is simpler. In theory.

There were ducks on the road, I said. And we almost killed them.

We almost killed them? And they would be dead? My daughter, always with the logic.

– That’s right.

Like the dinosaurs? And my great-grandpa?

– Something like that.

But why were we going to kill them?

– We weren’t trying to kill them. It was just going to happen.

But why was it just going to happen?

– Because sometimes those things just happen.

Like rocks falling out of space and killing the dinosaurs?

– Yep.

And my great-grandpa?

– Your great-grandpa wasn’t a dinosaur. Not exactly.

But did something kill him?

– Yes. No. Sort of. He just died.

But why? Are we going to just die? When? WHY?

At this point, one wonders what’s really so bad about saying that God decides everything for us and for the ducks and for the dinosaurs and we don’t really know why and so could you just stop asking already? Except that such answer would itself, inevitably, provoke a but why? and there are just so many but whys that a person can take before their head explodes. Anyone who doubts that there is such a thing as death by questioning has never taken a road trip with a three year old.

********

The trip didn’t kill us. Whether that was because of our superlative road-tripping skills, or because God is amused enough by us to keep us around, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m not all that interested in interrogating the why of our success, other than to reflect upon the utility of jellybean bribery, Der Kommissar singalongs and the occasional in-vehicle DVD in keeping small children happy during long drives.

But it was a success, not least because it affirmed for me – at a time when I needed such affirmation, badly – that regardless of whether the road is less traveled or more traveled, it is best traveled with friends and with family and with the spirit of curiosity and adventure. And that it is, always, well worth leading your ducklings out into the world, even if it does hold speeding vehicles and spinning tires and – if my daughter is to be believed – the ever-present threat of dinosaur-and-grandpa-killing asteroids falling out of the sky.

Just put one foot in front of the other, and go.

PS: If anybody out there has any advice on how to explain death to small children – or even just how to explain the difference between roadkill, extinction events and the deaths of grandparents – I would be much obliged. She is not letting this one go.

Here’s the thing that we discovered yesterday: when you decide to fly half-way across the country with three small children, just so that you can turn around and drive back in the other direction, you need to have a plan.

Our plan is: schedule travel around cycles of exhaustion, which is to say, schedule travel to occur immediately after the children have worked off all of their excess energy, such that they’re always near collapse by the time they’re loaded in the vehicle. And if that means blasting ABBA at 9 o’clock in the morning so that they can choreograph, practice, and perform a Live! Preschooler! 1970′s Dance Revue!, so be it.

And if the music box craps out, just pray that the car seat straps hold.

(More updates will be posted at the I’m A Mom Blogger On A Road Trip, Get Me Out Of Here website and at Their Bad Mother and pretty much everywhere else that I write. And if I go radio silent anywhere for more than 48 hours, it means that the ABBA didn’t work and the children have taken over, so. Maybe send help.)

(Have to close comments, because I just won’t be able to read them. Comments are open and being moderated at the Road Trip site, however, so if you have helpful tips for travelling with rabid badgers and perhaps music for the taming thereof, please do weigh in.)