It might have been okay, but then they released Hanson.

When I was running errands yesterday, I had my iPod plugged in in my car and the windows down.  I don't know why there's something exhilarating about doing that, whether it's blasting your favorite song or exorcising road rage with something bass-heavy and angry.  It reminded me of a time before I got my driver's license. 

I was one of the youngest people in my class so all my friends were already riding around, proclaiming their love for Dave Matthews by turning up Under the Table and Dreaming as they peeled out of the school parking lot.  Of course we had fun driving around town together, but I longed for control of the wheel.  I wanted to blast Jagged Little Pill whether I was with friends or not!  My greatest teenage fear at that time was that there would be no more good songs to play by the time I got my license.  Literally, the music world would run out of material and I would be left to play the same old Gin Blossoms on repeat for the rest of my life.  How tragic to lose the joy of driving before I even had it.

Well, duh, that didn't happen.  I am happy to report that musicians have not given up the passion to create, that there are yet thousands of chord combinations to be discovered.  And I still listen to some of those '90s songs with the volume turned up because nostalgia is an excellent passenger.

Three Teenage Girls: 1956

Three teenage girls in tight red sleeveless blouses and black Capri pants   

And colorful headscarves secured in a knot to their chins   

Are walking down the hill, chatting, laughing,   

Cupping their cigarettes against the light rain,   

The closest to the road with her left thumb stuck out   

Not looking at the cars going past.   

Every Friday night to the dance, and wet or dry   

They get where they’re going, walk two miles or get a ride,   

And now the two-door 1950 Dodge, dark green   

Darkening as evening falls, stops, they nudge   

Each other, peer in, shrug, two scramble into the back seat,   

And the third, the boldest, famous   

For twice running away from home, slides in front with the man   

Who reaches across her body and pulls the door shut.

 

-Steve Orlen

No animals were harmed in the making of this poem.

There is a car outside my window that needs to be dealt with.  Whenever it gets turned on, it makes a horrible ear-piercing screech.  The sound doesn't end.  It goes on for ten minutes.  What is the driver doing?  Is he checking to see if the sound will go away?  It's not going away, sir!  I keep sitting here at my desk/dining room table waiting for the car to drive off and leave me and everyone in a five-block radius in peace.

It has been three weeks since I first heard the sound.  At first I thought maybe it was someone visiting our across-the-street neighbors, the ever popular alleged drug dealers.  Those lovable thugs, they get so many visitors.  I'm sure every neighborhood has its own variety.  Ours take themselves literally in every sense of the word.  They are content to blast music but not just any music.  If it's Sunday morning, they will blast Easy Like Sunday Morning.  On repeat.

Anyway, it wasn't them.  I know this because last week I ran to the window after a particularly long session of acoustic bombardment.  I was intent on discovering which car it was and . . . after that I'm not sure what my next step would have been.  My downstairs neighbor once confronted a woman a few houses down who was laying on her horn for a good 15 minutes.  This was because she was too lazy to get out of the car and ring the doorbell for her friend/boyfriend/kid/whatever.  They got into a pretty good fight that nearly came to blows but luckily didn't since my friend is a dude.  The moral of the story is, think twice before you pick a fight in da hood.  So I ran to the window just in time to see the offending vehicle pull away from the curb.  Aha! I thought.  I've got your number.

The next time that car started up, I was ready.  I feel it's necessary to give you some sense of what it sounded like:

Imagine a bird, perhaps a canary.
Singing its sweet little song,
it gets to the trilling of a particularly
complex arpeggio when
an evil child plucks the bird
right out of the cage, mid-note.
The child holds the bird
in such a way that it can only tweet
the same note
in terror
over and over and over again until
the sadistic youth
swaps the birdcage for an electric fan.
The bird is dropped in its new prison,
the fan turned on so that now
the bird is shrieking
two variations of the same note
back and forth, back and forth
while the fan blades batter
its poor little organ.
The evil child then extracts
a cricket
from the depths of his pocket.
The poor thing clearly
has been through the ringer,
but it's not over yet
because now
the devil child
feverishly rubs together the cricket's wings,
chirping faster, faster
as if making fire.*
The bird and the cricket,
trilling and chirping,
shrieking and burning.
That is what this car sounds like.

My roommate happened to be around when the car screamed to life.  "Why doesn't he get that flippin' car fixed?"  "I know," I said.  "Let's see if he drives away."  Five minutes . . . six minutes . . . seven minutes . . . "ARGGGGGGHHHHHH I WILL CALL TRIPLE A MYSELF IF IT WILL TOW YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"

We ran to the window.  There it was, rattling, heaving.  The hood was up.  The driver stood before it, trying to solve the puzzle.  He tinkered.  He got back into the car.  He shut it off.

"Huh," I said to my roommate.  "I guess he's aware of the problem."


*I do not condone the torture of animals.  Do NOT try this at home.