Breathtaking or How I Learned to Articulate

Kids, dogs and camping gear were once again piled into our Suburban as we set off on another family vacation. We always started out early in the morning so the kids usually slept until we had left the city and suburbs far behind.  For some reason when they woke up the miles and miles of open road did not hold their attention for very long.  They amused themselves for a while trying to get truckers to honk by pulling on imaginary cords as we drove by.  Once they had managed to get a few responses they went on to play games involving the colors or state license plates of passing cars.

Eventually they would get bored with that too, so we always had them pack a small bag for the backseat with books and puzzles or small games.  Things were quiet for a while as they began to pull out their emergency anti boredom items until our 7 year old son complained that he had a headache.  Our first solution was to tell him to close his eyes for a few minutes.  Seconds later he announced that it had not worked.  For some reason the same child who could fall asleep in mid-sentence when tired and who had slept for the first two hours of the trip, was unable to close his eyes for more than 10 seconds at a time. 

When he complained again he said that he was having a hard time reading because of his headache.  I told him that he needed to stop reading for a while because that would probably help.  That seemed to do it because we didn’t hear anymore complaining from the back seat for a while, just what I thought were heavy sighs of boredom.  After the third one I turned around in my seat to check it out, just in time to see that the sigh was really a long exhale.  Then I watched as he filled his lungs, puffed out his cheeks and held his breath.  I asked him what he was doing and after exhaling again he said with a tired whine that he was doing what I told him to do but that it was hard not to breathe.