You are in for a treat today, readers. I am doing something different and approaching this article with a moderate amount of rationality. Well, sort of -- I am going to suggest that parents should buy their teenagers a minivan for a first car, a problem I will approach from both the parents’ and the teenager’s point of view in the interests of diplomacy and taking up space.
Believe it or not, there are many things I know very little about, such as the topography of Oregon, or how escalators work. I also don’t know too much about parenting, other than what I’ve learned from watching “18 Kids and Counting.” But I understand that the only reason parents buy minivans is because they have no other options, which also explains how someone ends up at a Counting Crows concert -- there are no other alternatives.
Most parents hate minivans, as they are generally viewed as two-ton masses of social stigma fueled by Franzia and maternal angst. If you are a parent, your unmarried friends will mock you with cries of, “should’ve used protection.” But speaking of protection -- your son or daughter will receive tons of it in a minivan. TCS, ABS, ESC -- they come standard with more acronyms than a national security briefing. They are some of the safest vehicles on the market, and I’m told that parents care about this sort of thing.
Work with me here, parents. Telling you that teenagers -- whose brains are about as developed as a Michael Bay plot line -- should drive around in minivans might seem like a gigantic mistake. And make no mistake, minivans are gigantic. The captain of the Titanic likely compared his boat to a Toyota Sienna, and upon hitting the iceberg, he probably wished he was in one, given that they have things like crumple zones and side curtain airbags.
Unlike the Titanic, minivans are actually good at surviving collisions with things, such as icebergs and your neighbor’s patio furniture. This makes them perfect for teenagers, whose goal is to crash into as many things as possible when driving.
And as mentioned before, minivans are the perfect size. If you give your teen something too large, like a lifted pickup truck, they will roll it before you can say “underage drinking.” On the other hand, if you give your teenager a compact car, like a Ford Focus, they will be sawn in half if they collide with something small, like your neighbor’s patio furniture.
So do minivans sound cool, teens? Probably not -- but that’s the point. We know that most teenagers are only concerned with looking cool, which makes me question how Blink-182 stayed popular for as long as they did. And don’t get me wrong: minivans are certainly not cool, but teenagers should appreciate that. You will enjoy a Trojan Horse-esque invisibility from police and your parental units. Minivans are the B-2 stealth bombers of the automotive world, only slightly larger.
And unlike your friend’s Honda Civic, which boasts roughly the same amount of power as a blender, minivans can pack a punch. This is another one of their great features; parents and police officers remember an era when minivans were slow -- Congressional legislation slow, "Lord of The Rings" plot slow. Now, they are designed with speed in mind, allowing mothers to break the sound barrier so that they can get to Costco in time to save $5 on printer ink.
When you aren’t racing grandmothers from stoplights, you can carry six or seven of your friends to the library, or wherever it is that teens go these days. Here’s the thing, though: since college students are just teenagers with student debt, all of the previous benefits still apply to them. You can park a minivan on campus and not worry about it getting stolen (for obvious reasons). You can take your entire freshman hall to Ikea and still have room to bring back multiple pieces of furniture -- the ones that require a linguistics degree and half an hour to pronounce.
There you have it, parents and students -- the greatest compromise since the Doritos Locos Taco. Minivans are like sweatpants: you don't want to be seen in them in public, but they're comfortable and work for everyone. Now, stop reading this article; you're going to be late for soccer practice.
