Perfect background music can bring clarity to any situation

Busted flat in San Jose, about to miss my plane. I was feeling
nearly as faded as my jeans.

Well, we hadn’t exactly busted flat, but from the
driver’s shop-talk lingo, I couldn’t tell exactly how
our car had gone from 75 to zero miles per hour on the old
Highway-17 North. I was, however, feeling in the same state as my
pants ““ neither of us had met a bar of soap in the last two
and half weeks. So I figured I had perfect rights in belting out
one of Janis Joplin’s hits and, of course, adding my own
personal touch. 

The 17 doesn’t run exactly through the most populated
areas of Northern California. We were frankly in the middle of
nowhere. For the past little while I had been living on one of
those oversized trampolines in a friend’s backyard in Santa
Cruz while finishing a general education requirement I had
neglected before transferring to UCLA. 

But a lack of showers and a stereo wears hard upon the simple
university student, and through the convenience of modern day
transportation and my parents’ kindness, I was being offered
an escape. An escape whose prospects were rapidly dimming as I
realized that with only a tiny wad of ones in my pocket, an
uncharged cell phone and no time to spare, the only logical thing I
could do was sit down on the roadside and sign my heart out over
the rush of afternoon traffic.

Much to the pleasure or annoyance of the driver who was pacing
up and down the length of the burnt out, green Saturn, I
did. By the look on his face, it seemed as if my voice was
only tragically reenacting the recent death of his car, but it was
somewhere in between the first verse and chorus that I had an ah
ha!

“Ah ha!”Â It caught his attention, well,
mildly.

“Your phone works now?”Â He looked so hopeful,
but, silly boy, it was a miracle that my phone hadn’t
worked. Otherwise I wouldn’t have channeled such a great
side-of-the-highway wisdom tidbit.

“Nope. But listen. Remember when summers were just
nonstop noise? Remember when school would let out and it was
just rock ‘n’ roll all the way to
September?”Â He looked at me a little disappointed.
Perhaps we had had different childhoods. 

“Um, I guess.”

“Well, that’s all coming to an end now. I mean,
pretty soon we’ll have degrees and 40-hour weeks, and
we’ll be easy-listening addicts just to cope with 5
o’clock traffic.”Â The guy was obviously unready
for facts; he resumed his pacing, and I resumed with the second
verse. 

But you know, soon enough everyone comes around. He
certainly couldn’t pace himself out of the situation. We
plopped ourselves in the adjacent field, hung long pieces of straw
from our lips and proceeded to read aloud from Billie
Holiday’s autobiography, “Lady Sings the Blues,”
in near screams in competition with the loud cars racing only 10
feet away from our toes. 

After a lifetime of always knowing where the next year leads, of
always knowing that such-and- such essay will be due on
such-and-such day, that such-and-such road will lead to
such-and-such destination, that such-and-such major will shoot
us off into such-and-such career, it felt plain good not to have
any idea where I was, where I was going, or how I would get
there.

Because, baby, freedom ain’t nothing but another word for
nothing left to lose, and with my homeward plane flying somewhere
far over my head, I think I knew what that wild-haired hippie girl
was talking about. Oh, come September I’ll get back on
track. I’ll eventually catch that plane. But until
then, may your summer be an endless escapade with the right
background music, of course. 

Since trampolines don’t have mailing addresses, e-mail
Glass at eglass@mail.media.ucla.edu.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *