vituperation

August 19, 2002

Caught in the act.

Kitty lovin’.

So I was driving home from work one day last week - Tuesday, if memory serves - having as much fun as I can in such circumstances, when something happened to lighten my day. I was sitting at a red light on the main highway I use on my trek home from the office.

The light turned green and I accelerated. Now, I’m not a fast driver per se, but I do tend to be quicker than most people on the initial get-go. On this particular day, something unusual happened: the person in the white Maxima next to me kept pace with me, but slightly behind me. The front end of the car was about even with the passenger window on my Jeep. We were going up a hill, side by side, and this car was sticking to me like a Democrat on a tax increase no matter how hard I accelerated.

Not that I was trying to race, or anything.

After several seconds of this neck-and-neck driving, the car pulled up enough that I could see better, so I glanced over at the other driver. It was an upper-middle-aged woman - maybe 55 - something that took me completely by surprise. I mean, you expect men to drive fast. You don’t expect women to. Especially not older whitebread middle-class women in white Maximas, like this one. But she wasn’t just driving, nope.

She was singing.

She was singing like I sing when no one’s around. Like she was on a Broadway stage singing Christine to some Phantom; singing like Eponine to some Marius; singing like Maria to some Von Trapps. She was singing like she was up for a Tony Award, and this was the show that was being televised to millions around the world.

Her head snapped back and forth, bobbed from side to side, and weaved all around. She was clearly enunciating each syllable, it appeared, and one hand waved majestically as though she were helping to conduct the orchestra while she sang. That, or she was emphatically trying to make the point she was singing, as we car-singers tend to do. Hands are wonderful for making musical points, particularly in an emotion-filled song.

Most of all, though, she was enjoying herself. She had a huge smile on her face as she passed me, and looked happier than probably 98% of the people I normally pass on my way to and from work. I watched her go by, and resumed my singing (Tommy, if you must know), which I’d stopped because I was at a red light with people around. God forbid someone should see me singing like that.

As she pulled on by me, her head still snapping around sharply and her hand waving to the music playing in her world, I noticed the small Canadian flag bumper sticker on the rear of her car.

Yay, we made reservations this weekend to visit the redneck Mecca in October! I can’t wait to be there with my fellow trashies.