My family and I are driving down Airport Road, having a conversation about – “Volkswagen Bitch!” my daughter screams, and I feel a sharp slap across my cheek and ear. It forms a belly-buster of an echo in the car. My wife, sitting next to me, winces, the left side of her face screwed up in a seizure-like, frozen explosion of expectance. Pow!

“Hey now,” my wife exclaims. My son is ducking and moving side to side like a beach crab in the UFC. He senses her mad excitement, her complete lack of motor control, and her gloves-are-off (legally, I might add) attitude.

“If you don’t let me get you now, you can’t get me later,” she warns. He does not give in. There is silence in the car for about thirty seconds, then, Pow! She has feigned disinterest.

“Hey!” my son yells, and like all pillow fights after the first three minutes, shit just got real.

What started this madness? My daughter and I were riding in the car one day and I said, “Hey, what if we took this whole Punch Buggy thing to the next level?” She weighed in and, before you know it, Volkswagen Bitch! was born. Let me go over some rules on this next level enhancement to an oldie but goodie.

First, it has to be a bug. Yes, we experimented with calling it on all VW’s, but then it was harder to get validation. Trust me, there are plenty enough bugs out there to get a car full of compadres red-faced before their destination.   Next is validation. You can’t absentmindedly call VB’s and then claim them to be just out of sight. Some people, like me, will turn the car around, even if we’re running late, and go back to validate said VB! If you are lying, or if you have accidentally, in a fit of anxiousness, erroneously called VB! Then you have uttered a False Volkswagen. The penalty here is that everyone in the car gets to slap you. And keep in mind that the people who will be slapping you have just been wrongly violated by your palm. Their reprisals will rank high on the Pimp Scale.

And so, after calling VB! and said validation, comes the pot of Bitch Slap at the end of the German-made rainbow. The Connection. It must be open handed. And preferably, consist of 75% fingers. Too much palm can lead to things ‘getting real’ in a high speed vehicle. And absolutely no backhand. Real pimp slaps are not for VB! If all players can keep it at a moderate 6 to 7 on the Pimp Scale, everyone’s masochistic tendencies are usually satisfied by the end of the trip. Oh, and make sure to get permission from new passengers before playing, as new recruits are often caught entirely unawares and may veer sharply from the observed rules once initiated.

More rules: You can’t call VB! on bugs in car lots. This only leads to a car full of manic, auctioneer sounding, stuttering lunatics who flail wildly and without clarity of purpose. You can only call VB! when everybody is inside the vehicle. An impromptu game in Denny’s can draw unwanted attention and drama to your family’s breakfast. You can’t call duplicate VB’s, e.g. you can’t call it on a bug in a parking lot, then drive by 30 minutes later and call it on the same one. This is not a False Volkswagen, but is frowned upon. If you can’t reach the other players in the vehicle, for safety reasons, you may save up VB’s and use them on passengers once you have exited your vehicle. But once you are back inside the vehicle, even if you had 8 or 10 saved up, you can no longer use them. Exiting a vehicle and returning to it erase all saved VB’s.

So the next time the kids are bored on a long trip, put away those Nintendo’s and that scavenger hunt piece of paper, and bring a little something to the table that will keep everybody wide awake and hyper-aware on that endless road. Volkswagen Bitches!

We are currently working on another next-level game called Po Po Mutherfucker! After a trial session, we are letting our bruises and lesions heal. When we are talking to each other again, I will give you an update.