Calling shotgun and playing by the rules.

I think that there are a lot of things that almost everyone can relate to, even if you don't have two little sisters. One of these things is the whole subject of "shotgun." The shotgun seat is the seat right up front next to the driver. In a family with 3 kids and a dog, we naturally have a pretty big car. (ps. you will be able to tell which car is the Duffy-mobile if you see my tiny mother barely visible behind the steering wheel, for future reference.)
Since I am the oldest, growing up I got the privilege of sitting in the front seat first, because the other two had either booster seats or were too young. This was great until Niamh and Aoife started growing...and realized that the front seat wasn't actually Aisling's seat. I had always known about calling shotgun, but one day after Niamh and I had many fights over the front seat (ending up with us both sitting in the back), she ran out of the house yelling "SHOTGUN SHOTGUN."
 It was war.

 The rules of shotgun (according to us) are this:
1. If mom and dad are both in the car, nobody gets shotgun.
2. All of us have to be outside the house and the car has to be in sight in order to call it.
3. You can't have shotgun to AND from the destination (I usually get away with this one)
4. If your hand touches the door, you can ride shotgun.
5. Mom has the overall say of who rides shotgun.

Aoife is now grown up enough to know that she too can call shotgun, but with 3 of us, we fixed the rules to our standards, and most days we get punished so we all have to sit in the back.