Never having experienced true torture beyond that which my older brother subjected me to growing up, I can only judge torture by its outcome. In the immortal words of Star Trek’s Spock, I believe that,

“…the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the
few or the one.”

With the exception of maybe paying taxes, I agree with Spock and as such, I’m all for torturing known criminals when the ultimate goal is saving lives. Recently, Waterboarding, an arguable form of torture involving holding a person’s head backwards while pouring water into their breathing passages, has become something of a debate. Some say it IS torture while others say it is not.

I say, “Forget Waterboarding!” I have a much more effective form of torture that is sure to bring a callous, grown man to tears within an hour. Here’s how it works.

Take a small-to-medium-sized pickup truck and clean everything out of the back cab area. Then, take two Graco or Cosco (or really any brand will do) car seats and force the person to install them in the back behind the front seats. Make him or her put them in and tighten them down, then remove them again and start all over. Force them to do this over and over again ’till they break. If you can do it in a hot garage, even better!

It’s that simple, and if you don’t believe that it’ll work, I invite you to come over to my house and try it out.

I know this is torture because I had to do it last night and I have the scraped knuckles and peeled back fingernails to prove it. I just don’t understand why they have to be so friggin’ difficult. I mean, I’m a small man, with fairly small hands and I can just barely get mine in that tiny little tunnel in the back of the carseat where you’re supposed to thread the shoulder belt through. And forget using the latch thingies in the back of a pickup truck because once you get two of these gargantuan seats in there, there’s no room for your hands to go digging down behind the seat in search of the buckle.

Ohmylord! I spent nearly thirty minutes struggling and swearing reasoning with our seats last night before finally coming to the conclusion that you could only do one of the following:

1. Put one car seat in the back of cab behind the passenger’s seat and another in the front passenger’s seat
2. Go purchase a “booster seat only” for our four-year old and put that either in the front seat or in the rear behind the driver
3. Say “screw it” and work from home on Monday so CareerMom could take my truck to the airport, while I took the boys in to daycare. This way, I get to keep the car all week while she’s in San Francisco. (While overall the most attractive option, I hated to do this because I’m already going to work from home most of the week and figure I should at least go in on Monday)

When I bought my truck, a Dodge Dakota with a club cab (not the cab with extra doors), I did so because it was the only medium-sized truck that let you put car seats in the back without having to spend the extra $3K on the quad cab. And at the time, I was only thinking about one car seat, not two. I didn’t consider that when one child was older, and we had another one to contend with, the older child would need not only room for the carseat, but also room for his legs.

Silly me!

Anyway, we chose option # 2 and got a booster-seat-only thing and put it behind the driver’s side. It’ll still be cramped, but at least he won’t be in the front seat (although that would be kinda cool for him!)

Childboarding may not be true torture by some folks’ reckoning, but you put a clean, calm, grown man in that situation and he’ll come out a different person altogether. And maybe he’ll be ready to talk too. I sure was. Of course, what I was saying wasn’t exactly fit for a child’s ears.