My family is a bunch of copycats.

Four and a half years ago, my Jeep Grand Cherokee started to refuse to start (I’m good at grammar!). Every couple of days, it would take three or four tries before it would turn over. We had a little monkey named Emma at the time, and a monkey named Patrick in utero, so we decided that it was too risky for me to be driving a car that might not start when I needed it to. Well, I guess, technically, it was I who decided that I wanted a new car, and it was Tom who does what I want (I just love that about him!).

So, we started looking. At first, I had my little pathetic heart set on an Audi station wagon. The thing drove like a dream, and had a flip-up back seat just like the ones I remember as a kid. The more we looked into the Audi, though, the more we realized what a silly decision it would be to buy it. The back seat was only rated for kids ages 8 to 12. We figured that by the time we had our 4th child, we might have one kid who was 8, but then we’d still be trying to shove three other kids in the middle. Hindsight being 20/20, if we’d bought that car, we’d have had to sell it since our oldest is only 5 and we now have 4 kids. Okay – back to the point. We decided not to buy the station wagon.

So, I was in a quandary. Should we buy the Ford Excursion? It was a cool car, very big, but the Fords to which I have been exposed have never been all that great in the maintenance department. Basically, once the warranty ran out, you may as well sell the car to some unsuspecting sap who will then be the one to put the few hundred bucks every couple of months into the repairs.

There was another option. But I had promised myself I would never do it. I would never, ever become one of “those women.” I called Tom. “Sweetie, I have an idea, but you have to promise not to laugh at me,” I said. This type of conditional introduction to a concept frightens Tom, so he said he would try not to laugh. And then, I came out with it:

I WANT A MINIVAN.

Oh, dear. I’d become a soccer mom.

Surprisingly, Tom didn’t laugh. Instead, he started to do some research, and we came up with two viable minivan options: the Toyota Sienna and the Honda Odyssey. We test drove both, and messed around with the seating options, and finally decided on the Odyssey. It had the pull-down back seat, and the Sienna you had to drag the heavy seats out.

We went to a ton of dealers, and Tom even let me do the negotiating all by my lonesome! At the time, Odysseys were in high demand, so there was very little wiggle room, but I was able to get one dealer to give me the van at the price I wanted with the options I desired (a CD changer and a DVD player). Needless to say, we waited with baited breath until the van came in, and off we went in our new car, dubbed “The Silver Bullet.”

Four and a half years and 97,000 miles later, I still love that van. It’s awesome.

Of course, this leads to my problem with the siblings. Once we got the Odyssey, all of our siblings got one, too.

It started with Tom’s sister Caroline, who got a silver one. Then Tom’s sister Mary also got a silver one. She told us later that she thought we all had green ones, so she was trying to be different. Really, I think she was trying to copy us because we’re so spectacularly awesome.

Then, my sister Brigid, a rabid anti-minivan lady in her youth, got one. And, last night, my sister Rita, career woman and super mom, also got one.

And then there were 5. All because we bought one and loved it so much that we couldn’t stop talking about what a great idea it is to have a Honda Odyssey.

Tom and I are trendsetters. That’s all there is to it.

My mother says that a minivan “just makes sense.” Whatever. Everyone does it so they can be like us because we’re so cool.