Take Me Out To The Ballgame...

I had this brilliant idea to take my parents out to a Detroit Tigers game. After I bought the tickets I realized that I may have made a huge mistake. Detroit is about three hours from where we live, neither of my parents travel very well or get out of the greater Grand Rapids area very often, so it was going to be a test. I remember one time I had my mother drive me to the Detroit International Airport and after being in the car with her for three hours I wanted to strangle her.
"Lynn, you're driving me nuts constantly changing the radio while you're driving," She'd say.
"You're driving me nuts nagging at me while I'm driving!" Don't get me wrong, after my mother finally got through menopause she was not as much of a raging, nagging bitch, but holy crap she is one of the worse back seat drivers I have ever seen in my life, aside from my father's mother who would constantly nag at my grandfather to slow down to 25 miles in a 50 mph zone. It wasn't too big of a surprise when my dad found him trying to fashion some sort of noose out of twine, I'd be trying to get away from that woman too, if I were him.
Anyway, we had not even left yet, and my mother was fussing over getting the car loaded with snacks and getting on the road. The game starts at 4pm. If we left at 1pm we would have plenty of time to get there, but because my mother has been a mother for most of her life now, she has to have everything absolutely together and ready to go. I remember as a child missing out on doing things with my friends because it "was too spur of the moment." Needless to say I did not have too many friends growing up. I am not in a hurry to get on the road at noon, because we will be in the car for six hours.
The drive over to Detroit goes by relatively well, but we did miss our exit because my mother did believe me when I told her to what exit to take. We find the lot I have already paid for the car to sit in and we go into the ball park and find our seats. I have realized that I need a drink at this point. When I was in college and my parents would come to visit on Sundays, I would pre drink before they came over so I would be in a better mood. My parents don't drink; growing up, I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen them drink. This contrasts nicely with my dad's brother (everybody's got a druncle) who is president of his AA group.
My only regret during the game is that I did not get another beer. No matter, the Tigers won and it was a beautiful day.
The only annoying part was that on the way home, my dad was convinced that I had directed my mother the wrong way on the freeway. There's a reason he always has to ride in the back seat.