SOMEWHERE ON I-80 — After 14 gas station stops, 3 diaper blowouts, 2 lost sippy cups, and 1 emergency roadside Primary song singalong, local father Tyler Ballard says he has gained a spiritual testimony of the men who pulled handcarts across the plains.
“I used to think the pioneers were just a bunch of old guys with beards and blisters,” Ballard said from the driver’s seat of his Cheerios-stained Honda Odyssey. “Now I know they were just regular men, quietly suffering while their wives insisted they missed a turn because they weren’t listening to their directions.”
The Ballard family set out from Lehi, Utah, en route to a nice summer vacation in Joelton, Tennessee. Tyler’s wife, Laurlene, packed 47 Ziploc bags of snacks, a full-size cooler, 18 books they would never open, and an entire Relief Society craft bin of road trip activities, all of which the children rejected within the first 40 minutes.
By hour six, the five-year-old was sobbing because the clouds were “too fluffy,” the two-year-old had removed his shoes, socks, and pants, and the baby was inconsolable unless the car maintained a constant speed of 83 mph on cruise control.
“We wouldn’t have gotten lost if he’d just listened,” Laurlene said while wiping applesauce off the ceiling of their hotel room in Salina, Kansas. “I told him to turn left at the tree that looked like Nephi. I even gave him 2 seconds notice! The Martin Handcart Company got lost too, and they were literally following angels, so I don’t know what everyone’s so upset about.”
Tyler bore his newfound testimony in sacrament meeting the following Sunday. “Brothers and sisters,” he said, voice trembling, “they didn’t have A/C, but they also didn’t have to listen to a 45-minute loop of ‘Baby Shark’ while someone hurled Goldfish crackers across the backseat.”
Historians confirm that while early Saints walked over 1,000 miles in brutal conditions, not a single one had to field 13 variations of the question, “Are we there yet?” in the space of five minutes.
“I came for a vacation,” Tyler said. “Instead, I crossed the plains with a cursed playlist and a leaking sippy cup. I get it now, pioneers. I really do.”
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