This post originally appeared on Folk Rebellion.

The idea arrived in an idle moment. It was the early ‘90s and I was navigating my first decade of existence — a formative period I’ll forever associate with missing teeth, ill-fitting overalls, and a firm belief in the miracle of Santa Claus. On this particular occasion, I was buckled into the middle row of my family’s legendary sky blue Dodge Caravan, counting cows and semi-trailers en route from Maine to my grandparents in upstate New York. Staring into the rear side of a felt headrest, I had an epiphany: Wouldn’t it be amazing if this thing had a T.V.?

In the absence of gadgets, my antiquated in-car entertainment was limited to the aforementioned cattle counting, traditional boredom affirming games like ABC Bingo and I-Spy, arguments with my siblings and early existential introspection to the soundtrack of Van Morrison and The Chieftain’s Irish Heartbeat — on compact cassette, no less. I might’ve read, but something about a stationary page in a moving vehicle has never quite agreed with my stomach. Instead, I was forced to occupy my time with the intangible; my idle arsenal was largely limited to my imagination and thoughts. The horror.

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some humor and some style." - Maya Angelou

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A decade or so later, I’m an “after” product of orthodontics, regularly in adult-sized overalls, and still very much enamored of the holiday season’s glorified, albeit commercialized hero. I’m increasingly bitter, however, that I’ve yet to be fairly compensated for my trillion-dollar tech idea. Or maybe I’m just cynical in response to FOMO. Although portable entertainment became mainstream soon after my road trip epiphany, my parents never purchased a vehicle with a built-in DVD player. Nor did they install a CD player in that blue minivan. When I inherited the once reliable vehicle, road tunes were possible only by way of a battery-operated boom box, cradled in the arms over a passenger in an effort to minimize skipping on bumpy roads.