Singing Along in the Car (an entry featuring zeugmatic overuse)

If cars and music go together like peas and carrots, then friendships are the stews they're bulking up, or the broth, or, uh, I dunno.

Okay, you know what? Let's forget the food metaphor. My life is peppered (sorry, couldn't resist) with memories of driving around with various people, singing or listening to various CDs (this was mostly before the days of mp3 players).

I remember when two of my friends and I crept almost silently along a quiet neighborhood, making endless 2 mph loops to Godspeed You Black Emperor. It was trippy and sober, pointless and blissful.

I remember trips from Atlanta to Rome, Georgia with those same friends (and a few others, on occasion), staying excited throughout that mind-bogglingly tedious drive by doing a probably dangerous amount of in-car dancing — to everything from Rob Zombie to Mt. Sims.

I remember when I was a senior in high school, toward the end of the year, three random classmates and I got free advance tickets to see Death to Smoochy — one of them drove, we all listened to Outkast on the way there, and one of them suddenly said (after only 12 years of school together), "I never realized you had a sense of humor before!" Better late than never!

I remember driving around the loop road around Athens, Georgia, listening to the same three U2 songs over and over, because neither the person I was with or I could figure out how to progress — with the CD or each other.

I remember driving around Roswell, Georgia, singing along to You Oughta Know like it was going out of style — which, of course, it was. But my friend and I didn't care, and we rolled down the windows and shrieked along like the nerds we were happy to be.

I remember the summer I spent attached to the hip of a good friend; we'd wake up together, do nothing together, eat together, drive around listening to ABBA Gold together, then decide where to fall asleep together. It was an entire summer of Dancing Queens and Chiquititas — the first summer after my mother's death — when my father still paid all my gas money bills, I didn't have a job or any concerns over acquiring one, and I was starting to figure out who I was and who I could be in the absence of my mother.

I remember when another friend and I made faces behind my parents' backs as we trundled about, listening to my father's absolutely vile CD of Linda Ronstadt mariachi covers.

I remember driving back from Massachusetts to Georgia with a then-boyfriend and the heady mix of awesome and inexcusable he played us (everything from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 to the theme song from Greatest American Hero).

I remember driving to Cleveland with my father and playing him Weezer — his first exposure to the band, whom he now quite likes.


Funnily enough, I don't actually have a clue what was playing for a lot of memories related to my very first boyfriend ever. I remember what I was generally listening to at the time, but it's impossible to pin songs or artists to memories like the time I took him to the Chattahoochee to meet my late mother, or the time we were in the car with two of his friends and they asked whether we were dating, and we kinda looked at each other for confirmation before saying, "... Yes?"

I don't know if this means that my brain blocked out the information or never absorbed the musical context in the first place.

Birthday Reminiscing

One of the first birthday-specific memories I have is of my 10th birthday. I whined and whined and whined until finally my mother said I could invite 10 whole friends to commemorate my 10 years.

It ended up being horrifically stressful. It's certainly the earliest memory I have of thinking, "Oh, now I know what stress means! I get it!" I'm sure the other little girls thought it was no better or worse than other birthday parties they attended, but I just couldn't keep track of how all my friends were getting along, and the thought of any two of them not liking each other terrified me.

Of course, when you grow up to be me, you learn quite quickly that no matter how much you love somebody or something, others are unlikely to share in your enthusiasm to the same extent. I might love cephalopods, and I might love you, but you are not required to love cephalopods also.




I won't deny it helps, though.