Racing the clock

"Greetings, Agent Parent. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to finish a major work project, complete with Power Point presentation, while also driving kids to music lessons and the dog to the vet. Pick up dinner somewhere and have it on the table by the time your weary spouse gets home. Spend three hours overseeing homework, washing dishes and resolving disputes before falling into bed, exhausted. This Palm Pilot will self-destruct in 10 seconds."

(Cue theme music: "Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Dum-dum. Da-dum. Tweedle-dee. Tweedle-dum. You're late!")

Modern life has become "Mission Impossible." Working parents can't make a move without synchronizing our watches -- or, at least, our calendars -- and most days are filled to the brim.

To meet all our daily appointments, we need organizational skills and coordination and communication. We share responsibilities with our "team," assembled for their special abilities -- spouse, coworkers, carpoolers, cleaning lady, yard guy, babysitter, travel agent, in-laws. We schedule everything down to the exact minute.

And still we find ourselves zooming through traffic at the last possible second, turning a routine trip to the orthodontist into an action-movie driving sequence.

(That maniac you saw in traffic today? The one who nearly mowed you down with a minivan while trying to simultaneously drive, talk on the phone and discipline children in the back seat? Five will get you 10 they were late for soccer practice.)

Most of us have demanding jobs, chock-full of appointments and sales meetings and other time-wasters, and we speed through them so we have time left to do actual work. Quitting time gets pushed back, later and later, until it sometimes seems simpler to set up a cot in the workplace.

Things don't settle down once we finally do shake free; just the opposite. Our children have too many activities, all of which require transportation, typically all the way across town. We need family time and exercise time and laundry time and a few hours' sleep and, please, oh, please, just a few minutes to collect ourselves. Because tomorrow we do it all over again.

Everything must go like clockwork. Throw in a dental appointment or a flat tire or a special homework project or -- gulp! -- an unexpected business trip, and it all goes kablooey. Work goes unfinished. Dinner is forgotten. Children are left waiting at curbs, collecting resentment they can reveal to their psychiatrists years from now.

Families coordinate these impossible missions in different ways. Some use a universal calendar, where everyone in the family gets to note appointments and events. Others do everything electronically, sending e-mails and instant messages with constant updates (this technique has the added benefit of allowing family members to avoid each other). Some skip planning altogether, rushing around willy-nilly, everybody late all the time, until the parents keel over with heart attacks and the children become wards of the state.

At our house, we use a combination of methods. A technophobe, I use an actual paper calendar, where I write cryptic little notes to keep track of everything. My wife tracks everything by computer. Once a week, we synchronize our calendars.

Is our system working? Let's put it this way: If you see my minivan hurtling through traffic, you might want to drive up onto the nearest sidewalk where it's safe. Because here's what playing on my car stereo: "Dum-dum. Da-dum…"

Fast food

If you need proof that we're all too danged busy, consider this item from USA Today: This year, the average American will eat 32 restaurant-purchased meals in a car, up from 19 such meals in 1985.

When you consider that some Americans (like me) almost never eat in vehicles and that many don't even have cars, that works out to -- let's see, 32 meals into 52 weeks a year, carry the 2, minus Big Gulps, which aren't officially "food" -- to, um, one heckuva lot of meals on wheels.

I recently saw a fellow motorist who was weaving so much that I assumed he was drunk. As I nervously hurried past, I saw he was eating a big, drippy burger while also talking on his cell phone. Steering with his knees rather than miss a bite of burger or a juicy tidbit of telephone gossip. Both activities apparently were more important than the fact he was endangering lives. Did I mention this was on the freeway?

You who spend a lot of time commuting and/or eating in your vehicle probably are thinking about now: So what? We do what we have to do to make the most of every minute of every day. If it means dripping "special sauce" into our laps at 75 mph, then so be it.

Automakers strive to equip vehicles for full-speed dining. My minivan, the Soccer Mom Special, comes equipped with (and I'm not making this up) 13 cupholders. Thirteen. Since you can only fit seven people in this vehicle, the automaker apparently assumed that each passenger needs two drinks going at any given time. In which case, shouldn't the van also be equipped with a bathroom?

Creative auto engineers could come up with more ways to outfit our wheeled restaurants. They could:

--Add lap tables that fold out of the armrests, like the ones on airlines. Probably not safe in a crash, but tables would enable drivers to keep their hands free for driving, at least part of the time.

--Replace that "new car smell" with the aroma of stale French fries. Going to happen sooner or later. Might as well cut to the chase.

--Offer upholstery in colors that would hide anticipated spills: Hot Coffee, Old Ketchup, Dried Mustard, Radioactive Red Slurpee.

Fast food purveyors could help, too. How about packaging food in "feed bags" like horses use? Drivers could keep their hands on the wheel, while munching away at the food strapped to their heads.

More roadside cafes could offer "astronaut food," pureed items in plastic tubes. We could squeeze our meals into our mouths and skip all that inconvenient chewing.

Restaurants should also offer more food items "on a stick," so each motorist might have one hand free for steering. Burger on a stick. Chicken on a stick. Fish kebabs. Condiments could be in "dipping tubs" designed to fit in our many cupholders.

I'm sure creative food packagers are searching for such innovations. But, for my money, the best service concept could be summed up in one word:

Bibs.

Off road

Recent headlines about the horrors of rush-hour commuting were deeply satisfying to those of us who work in home offices.

According to a nationwide study by the Texas Transportation Institute, the average urban traveler was stuck in traffic jams for 46 hours in 2002, an increase of 187 percent over 1982. In some big cities, time lost to traffic tie-ups was much worse: 93 hours annually in Los Angeles, 73 hours in the San Francisco Bay area, 67 hours in Washington, D.C.

We work-at-home types hear about such wasted time (and expensive gasoline), and our well-considered, mature response is along the lines of: "Neener, neener, neener. Hahaha on you."

For most of us who work at home, the "commute" consists of stumbling down a hallway to the spare bedroom. We don't need a car; heck, we don't even need shoes.

(Now that my two sons get themselves to and from school, I sometimes go days at a time without driving at all. Or wearing shoes.)

One could contend that this is yet another argument in favor of the productivity of home offices, if we at-home workers made productive use of that time. However, "found" time is like "found" money. Easy come, easy go.

We're so busy congratulating ourselves on avoiding the commute, we fail to see that we waste many more hours every day than we would if we drove to real jobs where we had a boss breathing down our collective necks.

While the rest of you sit in traffic, listening to the radio and talking on your cellular phones and performing nostril maintenance, we housebound types are wasting time in much the same ways. Or worse.

Some examples:

--When I worked in a regular office, I almost never talked to my mother during working hours. Now, thanks to my flexible schedule and unlimited long-distance minutes, my mom and I talk all the time. (If I still commuted, these are conversations that undoubtedly would occur while I swerved through traffic. The world is a safer place.)

--We work-at-home types enjoy music while we're working, much as you do during your commute. But it's unlikely that you would use your driving hours to totally reorganize your CD collection, alphabetically, by artist.

--Some commuters work out their frustrations by cursing and screaming and making menacing gestures at their fellow motorists. For such venting, we who work at home have computers.

--Many commuters use their time in stalled traffic to snack. Not only can at-home workers eat all the livelong day, we can also take time to prepare elaborate dishes that can be devoured before the kids get home from school.

--You often see commuters grooming themselves in traffic. Work-at-home folks can spend unimpeded hours in front of the mirror, sighing heavily while examining wrinkles and gray hair and nostrils.

--If you're stuck in traffic, you can get temporarily distracted, but you can't really wander off from the task at hand. I sometimes find that I've wandered away from my home office to watch CNN or stare at passing clouds or gossip with my neighbors. Anything to keep from working.

As you can see, we don't really gain much time by not driving to work, despite our gloating. But working at home still beats commuting.

While we're wasting time, distracted and unproductive, we're not trying to simultaneously drive. Not much chance that we're going to have a wreck while padding to the spare bedroom. And there's a much lower incidence of road rage inside one's own home.

Neener, neener, neener.

Windshield warriors

Many people have become so attached to their cell phones, they've become like gun owners -- you'll take their phones only when you pry them from their cold, dead hands.

Which, if they're using the phone while driving, is exactly what can happen.

Numerous studies have found that talking on a cell phone while behind the wheel is such a distraction, is so debilitating to attentiveness, the motorist might as well be driving drunk. All over the country, lawmakers are drafting bans on talking-on-the-phone-while-driving in an attempt to stem the rising tide of phone-related accidents.

(California's hands-free-phoning-only law takes effect July 1.)

Imagine my surprise then when, while thumbing through a business magazine, I saw this headline: "If You're a Windshield Warrior, Here's the Technology to Make Your Car Your Desk."
What followed was an article that described such hot new gizmos as hands-free cell phones, GPS navigation systems, wireless headphones, DVD players, satellite radio subscriptions and wireless Internet access. These technological wonders are described as "very cool new tools . . . to turn the cockpit of your car into a terrific office."

This makes as much sense as saying you can turn your office into a car. Or your airplane seat into a "flotation device."

Just when you thought it couldn't get any scarier on the roadways, here comes a whole new generation of motorist distractions. It's bad enough that other drivers are weaving all over the road, yakking with their friends and eating fast food while steering with their knees. Now we've got to worry that the guy in the speeding SUV next to us is reading his e-mail? Or, mapping out his next destination on a GPS locator? Or, God help us, watching "Mad Max" on his DVD?

Call me an old fogey (you wouldn't be the first; I've got teen-agers at home), but I remember when driving was considered a matter of complete concentration. Hands on the wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock, eyes on the road, mind on full alert. When you were driving, you weren't doing anything else.

Now, drivers are doing everything else, except watching where they're going. Which leaves the rest of us terrified, clutching the wheel in a death-grip while our fellow motorists drift from lane to lane.

You'll never catch me using a cell phone while driving. One, I don't feel competent enough as a driver or a cell phone user to do both at the same time. Two, I usually forget to take the phone with me so it languishes at home while I'm chugging around in my car. Three, I don't have so many friends or so much urgent business to conduct that I need to talk and drive at the same time. Phone calls can wait. I'm busy dodging the other gabbing motorists.

I'll never, ever, get those other technological toys to use in the car. It's just too dangerous. I love e-mail as much as the next fellow, but trying to manage it while behind the wheel could give a whole new meaning to the term "computer crash." A GPS locator? I'd rather be lost. Better to pull over and use a regular old road map. Or, (insert gasp of horror from male readership here) ask someone for directions.

But if you insist on using your car for an office, I have a suggestion. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on all these gimcracks, use the money to hire a chauffeur. Then you can sit in the back seat and work all you want while a professional handles the driving.

Hire a driver who can sing, and you won't even need the radio. Just make sure the chauffeur knows to hold it down when you're on the phone.

Caution: Parent on board

For most people, commuting is a daily pain, a harrowing gantlet of freeway snarls and orange barrels and moron motorists. One of the joys of telecommuting, you'd think, would be eliminating the drive from your everyday life.

But we who work at home sneer at such assumptions. Not only do we drive as much as ever, but we're never alone in the car.

When you commute by yourself, you get to pick the radio station, you get lost in your thoughts, you get to curse the other drivers with impunity. But us? We've got children in the back seat, making demands, twitching and squirming, shouting and squealing and, God forbid, touching each other.

As we chauffeur the children around, we're at their mercy. They're free to do whatever they want in the back seat because we have to keep our eyes on the road. I remember when I was growing up, my angry father would warn, "Don't make me pull this car over." And my brother and I would giggle and snort because we knew he'd never stop to discipline us, not unless we started a fire. He was too intent on getting the drive finished. Now, I'm the same way.

I've heard all the advice from parenting experts about keeping kids distracted while they're in the car. We play the Slug Bug game wherever we go. For the uninitiated, the game goes like this: You keep your eyes peeled for a Volkswagen Beetle. When you spot one, you shout out "Slug Bug!" and whack your seatmate on the shoulder. I quickly banned the punching part of the game, but my two sons adapted their own version that includes shouting out the color of the Bug. We also count Slug Vans and Slug Trucks (which includes anything with rounded fenders).
Often, when things get too rowdy, I'll just shout out "Slug Bug" and they'll get so busy trying to outnumber my finds that they'll calm down.

Music also soothes the savage brats, and they're particularly fond of oldies, which includes any song recorded before, oh, yesterday. When they're getting loud, I keep turning up the radio, hoping some tune by James Brown or The Temptations will grab their attention. Unfortunately, they're more likely to seize upon some song I can't stand. I'll punch the radio button with muttered disgust only to hear, "No, Dad! Go back! I like that song!" Do I oblige? You betcha. Better to listen to Neil Sedaka than more bickering.

Their tastes aren't all repellent, though they are diverse. Ask my 10-year-old his favorite band and he'll answer the Beatles. The 7-year-old likes the Beach Boys and the Spin Doctors. They both know all the words to "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night and "Walking on the Sun" by Smashmouth. Go figure.

Having kids in the car restricts the driver in other ways as well. From the back seat, the children can eye the speedometer and compare it to speed limit signs whizzing past. A lecture soon follows.

Worst of all, kids inhibit your freedom of speech. You can't comment out loud upon the obvious mental deficiencies of the other drivers. I've always been the type of driver who keeps up a running commentary on what the other idiots are up to, usually in terms that would make a sailor blush. Parents quickly learn to quell this compulsion. The worst word blurted in the heat of the near-miss moment will be the one surely repeated at the dinner table.

Once, a couple of years ago, I was at a red light, facing one other car. Both of us had our blinkers going to turn left. The light changed and I started making my turn. The other driver, who apparently had decided to go straight after all, stood on his brakes, honked and made obscene gestures at me.

Instantly furious, I yelled, "You had your blinker on, you mo--" And then I caught myself, remembering the 5-year-old in the back seat. As I chewed off my tongue, the 5-year-old said somberly, "Dad, it's not nice to call someone a moron."

I said, "That's right, son. Sorry."

And I longed once again for the solo commute.