Hannah M

Keeping Grandpa Awake

On a Friday night my grandpa was in the area for work and had stopped by to have dinner with my family. He was heading back to Tennessee, where he and my aunts live. Since I wasn’t doing anything for the weekend I decided to come to Tennessee with him for a few days. I packed up some clothes and hopped into the car with him.  It was around 7 o’ clock when we left and the beginning of the drive was really slow. The minutes and the miles ticked by and drowsiness filled the car. Every road sign was only a little bit closer and the drive was taking longer and longer. 

You can usually find my Grandpa dosing off on the couch while watching TV, sitting in the quiet or even when you’re trying to have a conversation with him. So, it wasn’t very surprising when we were getting close to our destination my grandpa started getting heavy-eyed. He started closing his eyes so I turned on the radio and turned it way up in an attempt to keep him awake. The music blared through the car and it helped, but only for a little bit. I was getting more and more anxious and my grandpa was getting more and more sleepy.

I tried reassuring myself that nothing was going to happen, because my Grandpa does this for a living, driving all across the country and for his job. I kept telling myself I shouldn’t be nervous but I couldn’t help it. A storm was approaching and the sky was getting dark and I didn’t know how long it was going to be until my Grandpa was knocked out and who knows what would have happened then.

The thunder and lightning started to strike so I decided I was going to HAVE to do something or else we might just drive off the side of the road. I started to try and shake him awake every time we started veering toward the edge. I would try and coax him into to waking up, but unless I wanted to do that for the whole ride home I had to come up with something else. I had to try and tap into my survival skills but since I had never been in this kind of situation I didn’t know what to do. I started looking around and I finally figured something out. I would look out the window at the road signs and then make up little songs and sing them. If the road sign was about distance I would about how we were however many miles away from the place. My grandpa was laughing at how ridiculous I was acting but all I cared about was keeping us from flying off the side of the road.  The songs were catchy and made him laugh, but I was just glad I had finally found some way to keep him awake.

As we drove on and I was running out of ideas to try and keep him awake. But the storm finally approached and the thunder and lightning lit up the sky so I don’t think he was going to be falling asleep anytime soon. I was so glad that I had found something that had worked or else we might have been road kill on the side of the highway.

The drive only was about twenty minutes longer so I sat back and relaxed for the rest of the way. As we were nearing our exit I asked my Grandpa what he did without me to keep him awake. He told me he usually started to drive off the road and the sound of the --- helped to keep him awake.  As an example he drove off the side of the road, just a little and a loud noise filled the car. He veered back over and I breathed a sigh of relief that he was actually driving off on purpose instead of an accident.

When we got home my grandpa told my aunts all about the little songs I made up but all I had to do was tell them I was afraid he was going to wreck and they understood.