A few weeks ago, I got a rather substantial speeding ticket--for driving 39 in a 25. It was a Saturday just like today, and I was listening to NPR's World Music, dancing along, as it were, happy and oblivious to flashing lights.
Music and my feet are connected. It is impossible to listen to music without tapping. But I have learned my lesson.
The tapping foot is also the accelerator foot, ergo the speeding ticket.
On this Saturday afternoon, only a fool would go out on purpose. It's 103 degrees. But I needed something from Jo Ann's, so I ventured out, before the music programming started.
This is Part 2 of my driving lesson:
If you go at 5:00, instead of 6:00, what's on is The Moth Radio Hour--wonderfully told stories by real people about their lives. Today's stories featured fathers, telling stories about fatherhood and their own fathers. If you're a weepy sort of person, it's best to listen at home, not driving, else you might drive right through a red light.
I drove so-o-o slowly listening to these stories. I laughed out loud at the man who fell to his knees in Whole Foods just hours after his baby daughter had been born. There he was in aisle seven, weeping--because the song on the radio was "Isn't she lovely?" The PA system reported an "incident in aisle seven" and out came a manager who "looked like Rush Limbaud's angry brother," and this new father just stayed right there on the floor weeping and blubbering to the manager that his wife had just given birth to his little girl.
Then another storyteller told about the two weeks when his "ugly baby boy" turned blue--and his life was at risk for two weeks. I won't divulge the rest of the story (because I want you to hear it yourselves online). Suffice it to say, other drivers were honking at me to get a move on.
These stories are what NPR calls "driveway moment" stories. You cannot possibly get out of the car until the story ends, even if it is 103 degrees. If you miss Jo Ann's before it closes, so be it.
No comments:
Post a Comment