For years, I have fantasized about driving a car.

Nothing fancy.

Just a nice four-door sedan with bucket seats and a roof that slopes to a compact trunk where there's only enough room for my salsa dancing shoes and a bottle of wine for an impromptu picnic.

Instead, I drive an institution.

I drive a boat on wheels — that monotone mover of kids, bicycles and Juicy Juice that one friend calls a modern-day chastity belt, that symbol of Perky Mommydom that makes us all look and feel the same, whether we're 25 or 55, sexy or frumpy, opera singers or flower cutters.

I drive a Mommy Van, the latest of which I tried to trade in last week, right after a kid in my son's school carpool yelled, "Do you know there's mold growing in the cup holders back here?"

Ten years is long enough to hold onto a vehicle that needs two quarts of oil at every gas fillup.

And so that very night we go to the car lot, where I tell my husband to just look at that cute Pacifica over there. Instead of seating seven, I point out, it seats six, which is like going from a bus to a bubble, from a crate to a bird's nest.

The husband is going for it. The wife, who, let's face it, makes 80 percent of the buying decisions (according to Business Week), is going for it. The salesman, because it's 8:30 p.m. and the end of the month, even though he knows we need seven seats for our twice-weekly commitment to the carpool, is going for it big time.

And then my cell phone rings.

"You might want to reconsider where you're headed," says my friend, a fellow carpool mom and a Mommy Van prisoner herself. "It isn't even about the current carpool. Somebody could drop out. But then what if another mini-vanner comes along to add to everybody else's minivan and everybody is expecting you to have your minivan so you can keep your end of the deal?"

We minivan drivers are like the family man from the 'burbs who buys an SUV because it's an "off-road vehicle." Deep in his soul, he knows the only off-road experience he'll ever have is when he's driving on the freeway to Myrtle Beach, S.C.: He's in bumper-to-bumper traffic when one of his kids has go to the bathroom. So he goes "off-road" onto the gravel on the berm to get to the McDonald's restroom.

Same with minivans. The family of the average minivan driver includes 2.2 kids, says Angus MacKenzie, editor-in-chief at Motor Trend magazine. This is not nearly enough to fill seven seats — except those four times a year when the 2.2 kids invite 2.8 kids, plus Mom and Dad, to Chuck E. Cheese's.

It is the exception that makes the minivan buyer, though it's true we're buying them less: Minivans, which Chrysler launched 25 years ago, peaked in 2000 with sales of 1.4 million and have been decreasing in popularity ever since, thanks in part to SUVs, says MacKenzie.

Now come the "crossovers" — vehicles like the GM Saturn Outlook, which allegedly is a cross between a minivan — but with a sportier look and without the sliding doors — and an SUV — but with one more seat.

"What's happening to the minivan is what happened to the full-size station wagon," says MacKenzie. "You weren't to grow up and buy a station wagon. That's what your mom drove."

Get this: MacKenzie's wife, mother of four, so abhors the idea of the Mommy in the minivan that she and her husband drive two small cars instead of one minivan when they go anywhere as a family.

"It's all about image," says MacKenzie.

You can say that again, which I did over and over at the car lot that night.

We still ended up buying our third minivan in 14 years that night, though I insisted on leather interior and a sunroof, which, if I squint really hard, makes me think I'm driving a Jag.

And then we had to haggle over color, which had to not show too much dirt because I only wash my car when we're having people over; which had to not be too disco-ey, which, in my mind, is black with beige interior; which, first and foremost, COULD NOT BE PERKY.

We ended up with a muted navy, which I guess I can live with, even though the only people I know who drive a navy van are really, really perky people who get up at 4:30 on Saturday mornings to drive to soccer games.

Oh well, this really, absolutely is the last one, since, when the five-year lease is up, my kids will be 24, 20 and 15 and no longer interested in taking their friends to a pizza place with loud noises and a large, talking mouse.

Minivans and Chuck E. Cheese, take heed: Your time is at hand. And I mean it this time.

Journalist Debra-Lynn B. Hook lives in Kent, Ohio, with her husband and three children and has been writing about family life since 1988.