Today’s family cars are full of features and amenities that are great for modern families. Many are equipped with amazing sound systems, air bags at every seat, no less than twenty-three cup holders, and the all-time fan favorite—the DVD player. Sadly, we don’t have one in our minivan. Even if we did, I like to think I probably wouldn’t allow the kids to use it much anyway. But for long car rides, it would be super valuable. Life saving, perhaps.

Instead, we listen to a lot of music. There’s the Silly Songs CD, and the Pandora channel favorites: Mary Poppins Original London Cast and most recently, Disney. 

We also like to play games, like ‘I spy with my little eye,’ counting to one hundred, the guaranteed-to-drive-you-apeshit ‘I’m gonna say whatever you say’ game, and my favorite fallback, ‘let’s find some farm animals.’ 

When we tire of these games, there’s another little game that I like to play. It’s called, “Be quiet people, before Mommy has a nervous breakdown and runs us off the road.” Needless to say, the girls are not a big fan of this one.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. Why have the car engineers not yet designed a feature like the soundproof glass divider that exists in taxi cabs? It would make a GREAT addition to today’s family car!

Baby screaming his little lungs out? Time to crank up the glass! 

Middle girl counting to one hundred but getting endlessly stuck in this loop: 16, 17, 18, 19, 100! 16, 17, 18, 19, 100! 16, 17, 18, 19, 100! Fire up that shield!

Oldest whining that she doesn’t like that song, or asking how much longer til we get there, or worse even—asking you to count down the minutes until you do actually get there? Put that baby up already and drown out all the noise!

Want to have a conversation with your husband, whom you haven’t seen in a hundred days, without interruption? 

Want to listen to inappropriate content, like those Serial spinoff podcasts you can’t seem to get enough of these days? 

Want to meditate? Reflect? Just get some GD quiet time, please? 

Soundproof glass window up.

Problem solved. Now somebody go out there and design and/or market it, and/or patent it, and then give me 50/50 credit and a third of the share in profit. I would if I could, but I don’t have time.

I’m too busy trying to spy with my little eye something green that I know my two-year-old never even spied in the first place. This is gonna take awhile.