The 10 Most Annoying Kids To Have in a Carpool

Kids are smelly enough as it is, so the trip can get brutal when you have a revolting youngster turning your minivan into a gas chamber. This kid’s packed lunch is full of hard-boiled eggs, processed deli meats, and Polly-O string cheese. The best way to curb this child’s rankness is to be proactive: My mom once complained about my friend’s gas to his parents, and they actually decided to cut dairy out his diet.

This kid usually has a mad dorky name like Simon or Todd, and he’s always popping off at the mouth about things he shouldn’t know anything about. He’s always hitting you with brainteasers like, “What is the only state to border only one other state,” or telling you how you should drive your car. He is a pain in the ass, but you can’t tell him to shut up because there’s one more thing he knows, and that’s how to make you look like a monster to his parents and senior faculty members.

This kid rolls up with a trombone, four lacrosse sticks, stacks of SAT prep books, and all sorts of other shit you can’t fit in the car. He’s so used to multitasking that the carpool ride can easily turn into a glee club recital or spelling bee practice if you’re not careful.

Dropping this Little Lord Fauntelroy off at his palace is a slap in the face, reminding you of your professional failings and making your own kid resent you for raising him in a bungalow.

He knows you get to his house at 7:15am every day, yet he’s never standing out front ready to go. You roll up into the driveaway, wait a few minutes, honk your horn, wait a little longer, call the house phone, honk again. Finally he comes out 15 minutes later, and it turns out all he’s been doing was trying to finish a game of online Halo against some other shithead in Hong Kong.

When you slide open the back door of your minivan and look at the captain’s seat, it’s like a running archive of this little brat’s nasal woes. No matter how many times you catch him in the rearview excavating a fresh bogey, he simply will not stop.

It used to be that children wanted to become astronauts or heads of state. Now, thanks to the Internet, this kid in your car dreams of traveling the world playing shit music off his Macbook at raves. He always wants to put on the latest garbage that he has pirated, and he has an annoying habit of referring to songs from 2007 as “old school.”

Even worse than the kid who thinks he has good taste in music is the one whose liberal parents have weaned him nothing but Morning Edition and Stravinsky. He always wants to “hear what’s going on in Syria” when all you really want to do is crank up “Call Me Maybe” and pretend this isn’t your life.

This poor little guy doesn’t even want to go home, because his crib is a minefield of resentment and accusations about where his dad’s penis has been recently. He always wants to sleep over, but you’ve got your own problems. Don’t beat yourself up too much, he can always get therapy later.

Why are you following a 12-year-old on Twitter? This one’s on you.