A million years ago, my Hyundai was a piece of shit, and the wife wanted a minivan.  A $27,000 7 passenger minivan.  Why that one?  Because the second row had built in booster seats.  Any van could have managed the soccer mom, grocery getter jobs, but we needed a palatial stretch with painted bumpers and a useless spoiler in order to get the bucket seats that folded down into boosters, so that kid 2 didn’t need a separate booster seat.

(Yes, I went along with this bullshit.  Mea culpa. I didn’t do the math and I hoped to get laid out of the deal.

Karma:  What a shock.

Or at least rank higher than the kids.)

Anyway, the point is a $13,000 premium for excess capacity, some pointless doodads, just to get the convenience of not moving a booster seat from car to car or just buying a new one for Kid 2.  (and a surrendered man card.)  But the kid was worth it.

Fast forward to 2011.  Wife is now EXwife.  Kid 2 is explicitly behind Kid 1 in that house, which is not news.  What is news, is that she is explicitly behind the boyfriend.*  So much so that ex cut her loose – “Go live with your dad.”

*Kid 1 is likely also behind the BF in most respects, but that is more of a subliminal message and a race to 18 before she figures it out at this point.

The good news for Kid 2:  Dad has the palace.  Kid 2 doesn’t have to worry about rankings or position because home means not keeping score.  Kid 2 does chores and gets breakfast.  And, Dad got his man card back.