So THAT'S How Sardines Feel

This past weekend the ladies' prayer group that I belong to headed off (with spouses) to see the annual Christmas show at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster.  Gas prices being what they are, we thought it was prudent to meet at one location and then carpool to the show.  How I wish I'd thought to bring a movie camera.

Oh, I'm not talking about filming the show.  I would have loved to have had the camera to have filmed us all trying to fit into one van.  There were nine of us and seven were trying to fit into the van.  Two had elected to drive separately.  I was one of the ones who volunteered to sit in the 3-seater section way in the back.  I'm here to tell you that the back seat of a Kia van is NOT meant to seat 3 adults.

I crawled into the back and opted for the middle, in order to give the outer seat to one of our older ladies.  I figured it would be easier for her to slide into that seat.  The fun began when I tried to get myself seatbelted in.  One friend who was already in the back said, "Oh, we won't need seatbelts.  We aren't going to be going anywhere if we get in an accident."

Nope, I ALWAYS wear a seatbelt in a car so we started fumbling around to find the seatbelts.  We decided it would be best to get the first lady belted up before getting the middle person (me) belted.  After much fumbling, shuffling to the left and right, and false starts, I finally got the darn thing to click into the locking mechanism.  I looked at my friend.  Her face was turning purple but I couldn't tell if that was because she was laughing so hard or because the shoulder strap of the belt was tight up under her chin.  You see, she is not very tall but quite chesty and we all could stand to lose some weight.  I unsnapped the belt and we tried again.  After several more tries, we finally got the belt loose enough that it wasn't choking her.

Then it was my turn.  If it had been a good-looking man, it would have been rather thrilling because I was getting goosed plenty as my friend tried to help me get the darn clip into the lock.  We fumbled with it for what seemed like 5 minutes as we laughed like fools and finally I was safely belted in.

That left us with one lady left to go.  She worked her way to the back of the van and looked at the ten inches that we had left for her to squeeze into.  OK, time to do a little shifting and squeezing and then, by golly, she had 12-13 inches now to sit.  She was a good sport and managed to squeeze into the seat.  Finding the seat belt connections was another story.  She just couldn't get the hang of pulling on the shoulder strap in one long, smooth motion.  Instead she would abruptly jerk on it and of course, it would lock up.  We had quite a few false starts before she managed to get it pulled out long enough for me to grab the end and clip it in.  Unfortunately, she hadn't grabbed the slack of the belt over her chest as I was fumbling on the seat so once it was clipped in, she was plastered tight against the back of the seat and looked about as comfortable as a captive tied to a stake.  We unclipped the belt and tried again.  After about 5 tries, she finally understood how to grab that extra length of belt so that she could adjust it comfortably afterwards.

There we were, trussed up tight as sardines in a can and laughing like hyenas.  My hubby stood outside the van just looking at us and shaking his head.

"This isn't going to work," he said.  "Dee, let's take our car, too and then there will just have to be one person in the back of this van and two can sit in the middle."

Another five minutes passed as we extricated ourselves and everyone got rearranged in the proper seats and vehicles.  Sheesh!  It's a good thing we had given ourselves plenty of time to get to the show.  We certainly used up a lot of that leeway just preparing to get on the road.