I Belive in Car Radio

I believe in the car radio. Not in its existence, clearly, but in its ability to transform one’s mood in just the length of a drive.
This realization came to me a few weeks ago while I was driving back from work at the football practice. I’m thrilled to see my favorite collage team play although, practice had been a disaster. The team was offset, the quarterback was grouchy and whiny, and I was super hot. However, after the first few minutes of the car ride on the radio. Immediately a smile took over,as “funny the way it is “ by Dave Mathews band came from the radio and I cranked the volume, belted the words I knew, and air-guitared at every stoplight. what made it brighten my mood so suddenly was the very simple memory I will forever associate with it.
This memory took place when I was a freshman in high school, the time in your life when you wanted to curl up and disappear into independent adulthood any time your parents opened their mouths. My mom was giving a few of my friends and me a ride home and “funny the way it is” began to play. My mom started singing along quite loudly, an already humiliating act. Then she proceeded to jump from humiliating to mortifying in 2.5 seconds. After singing the line “with mountain and rivers and stars,” she felt the need to pose the following question to the group of six fourteen year olds in the backseat of her van: “Do you guys think they’re saying ‘stars’ or ‘big fat bars’?” But no matter how red my face was and how destroyed I believed my social life to be at the time, Mom and I have had some great laughs about it since then.
However pointless and silly that story may seem today, it still makes me smile and with every listen of that song comes that smile. This simple drive home made me realize how important those little memories are. “Seven seas” by echo and the bunny man reminds me of when my dad showed me that song on the drums. The memory of driving around Seattle the night my best friend got his driver’s license...