Driving Lessons

I really don't have a story here. I just happened to like the title. It seems that sometimes I get a thought or even just a few words together that I think would make a nice title. I suppose it could be about how my dad used to take me out on country roads and let me steer the car while he worked the pedals. Maybe throw in how he would try and teach me a lesson by punishing me. The driving part could be fun considering he died when I was twelve. I must have been sitting on his lap the whole time and I'm sure the way cars were made in the 60's that I could barely have seen over the steering wheel.

Or maybe it could be a story about golf. My grandmother played golf for a while when she was young. I think she was in her late 60's early 70's when she told me. I just for the life of me couldn't picture the tiny woman sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth ever playing golf. She said she didn't play that much. It was boring. Her and Mark Twain... "Golf is a good walk spoiled."

Just why is it that certain words or phrases will stick with me. It's annoying. Am I supposed to make something out of them? I feel like Rainman sometimes the way they keep revolving round and round in my head. Maybe there's a pattern or connection among the whole lot of them. Should I keep track of every stray phrase that wanders into my consciousness? Maybe I should have a cork board and pin them up like an entomologist would with insects. If I have to lable them in Latin, I'm in big trouble.

It's like the "Fun, Fun, Fun" syndrome. For those of you who don't know the syndrome I'm referring to, "Fun, Fun, Fun" was a song by the Beachboys (a group from the 60's who, believe it or not, gave the Beatles a run for their money) that once it gets in your head it won't leave. EVER! Until something else comes along to take it's place it just keeps repeating itself. Or "until daddy takes the T-bird away." Dammit!

And that makes me wonder who programmed the DJ in my head. Today, I woke up with the Mary Jane Girls singing "In My House" IN MY HEAD! Now where in the hell did that one come from? What overstimulated neural synapse sparked some life into that oldie? And why won't it leave? I've listened to the radio for at least two hours today. You would think that something, anything would have caught hold to knock the MJG's out of the top spot of my personal TRL. But no, they're still swaying back and forth, singing their biggest hit, and being just as trashy as ever in my brain.

I don't know if other people have their own sound track running through their lives, but mine is weird and unpredictable. Sometimes it will get caught on current songs, other times it's an old one that I've not heard or thought about in years. And in trying to think of some to list as examples, I've managed to do a mash up of "In My House" and "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. (Don't fear for my sanity. It apparently left with The Mary Jane Girls years ago and revisits me from time to time. From what I understand, they and my sanity are having a great time somewhere in southern California.)

Back to Driving Lessons (dammit! where is that missing headmaster?) I also get an image of my dad driving us through through thunderstorms when I was little. He absolutely loved being out in the wild weather. The more lightning flashing and thunder pounding the better. If you could see through the windshield it wasn't storming hard enough. I was terrified the entire time. I just wanted to be at home, safe and dry, not worrying about if a tree was going to fall on our car to crush us. Or if a tornado was going to show up in our path and pick us up and fling us down in a cornfield three counties away. Or even worse, get struck by lightning. But those things never happened. We always made it through safely to the other side of the storm. Although the rain was still falling on us, the sun would be shining; downed tree limbs and shredded leaves all around, but we would be just fine. And there was dad smoking a Pall Mall, his right arm across the steering wheel and his left hanging out the car window, on the lookout for the next big storm to drive us all through. Guess I had a story after all.