I saw this car ad a few days ago in a magazine that was showcasing the third row of seats in the back of their fancy, behemoth SUV. The tag line was something on the order of “The Bak Bak seat is cool”.

Okay. First of all, it’s the Back Back for Pete’s sake. And I’m not sure I have their spelling correct, but it doesn’t really matter because however they had it, it was wrong. And that was just the beginning of their wrongness.

The back back is NOT cool. And it is not a row of comfortable leather seating.  The back back sucks. It’s not meant for people, not officially, and it usually has no seats. (Exception: the wagons with the pop up seats that faced the on coming traffic behind you, aka, the vomit seats.) It’s the place where people shove groceries and tire jacks and picnic blankets too filled with prickers ever to make it back into the house. It’s usually got cheap carpet that leaves rug burns and it’s got detritus from years of living and neglect. There are no seat belts. You usually have to climb over the back row of seats to get there and no one chooses to sit there. You get stuck there because you are the youngest or smallest or someone hates you and likes watching you suffer.

The only thing cool about the back back is that if you survived it in your childhood, you are somehow a tougher human being. The sort than can handle driving backwards around curvy hills. That can handle unmentionable goo on your clothes. That has learned to flip off bad drivers in oncoming traffic that have the gall to look at you as you sit huddled miserably in the rear of the car and smile and wave at you. 

There is NOTHING cool about sitting in a comfy third row of seats in a brand new SUV, probably with cupholders and tv’s and your own climate control. Unless you’re a coddled wimp. Maybe that’s why even the ad people shied away from calling it the back back and came up with a fancy yuppie name for it. 

Wimps.