I'm thinking of an animal

First confession: I am never thinking of an animal. 

It's true.

Since it's my turn, and we are trapped in a car, I don't stop to think. Even the slightest hesitation would show my weakness, which I will put on full display anyway once I allow the 20-Questions portion of the game to begin. 

"What's the hint?"

My usual strategy would be a hedge. I will offer the size of my imaginary animal as being bigger (or smaller) than a bread box. 

But I'm tired of using comparisons that have missed their generational relevance by a count of two. 

I choose a more obvious dodge, one that won't paint me into a corner before the yes-or-no questions take effect: "It's super cute!"

Mind you I STILL haven't chosen an animal. I figure I have a least two, possibly three, more questions before I was at risk of having to "discover" an entirely new species and secretly create a Wikipedia page to fein "proof" of its existence before I'd be caught in my own web of deception and ridiculed mercilessly.

I figured wrong.

"It's mom cute, which means it's gotta be ugly somewhere."

We hadn't been playing our oldest and least annoying Long-Car-Trip game, "I'm Thinking Of An Animal," for even a single round when my eldest scorched me with this little burning ember of truth.

"Some people have faces only a mother could love, right? Well, our mother only seems to love those kinda faces."

It doesn't help to disagree. Both kids have the will and ability to prove their points with the help of 4G cellular internet access at their fingertips.

And that, dear reader, is how 27 minutes into a four-and-a-half-hour journey I was forced to realize my family not only has coalesced around this painfully obvious trait of mine, which has managed to elude my fraught self consciousness, but also an illustrative fact that lemurs are, indeed, "creepy looking."

I have to concede the point. Especially in light of a quick Google Image search revealing that the source material for Disney's King Julian didn't leave much room for exaggeration. 

While I quietly acknowledge the graceful herons posing in lush marshland and the sturdy ships in glistening harbors as we cruise past. I am bubbling with excitement the moment I see a giant inflatable lobster tethered to the roof of a seafood restaurant.

Eighty-seven minutes into the ride and the only sound inside the passenger cabin is the crunching of bagged popcorn and the rumble of the road.

The kids have plugged in and tuned out. No amount of oohing and ahhing over a horizon line cut by giant pines and marshy bogs is going to distract them from their personal tubes.

Ugly somewhere. The thought rings in my head. Aren't we all ugly somewhere? And not just in the asymmetry of our outward features, but also in the distressed resilience of our inward features? Our jealousies? Our inhibitions? Our insecurities? Our pain.

No one in this car wants to play this game.

"I'm thinking of an animal. ... It sticks its head in the sand."