I went to bed that night. I was young, I was in the final days of independence, and approaching the final departure into the unknown. Outside the crickets sang loudly. I drifted off instead into electronic bliss. I did not really know the impact of the sounds I was listening to, but I did know that they were something. They had at this point been around only 13 years, it seemed like so much more. I think because one moment I am a 6-year-old peeling registration stickers off the plate of my father’s 63 Plymouth in the driveway, then suddenly I am here, in the modern cold war, contemplating everything.
I had this old under-dash cassette stereo. Panasonic. No doubt made back in the 70s when 8-track ruled. Because it was built in this time period, there were characteristics of it that were more 8-track-like. It would move the play head, and reverse direction if it reached the end of the tape. This meant that you could put in one cassette tape and it would play forever, just like an 8-track does. Tonight, I chose Paul and Linda McCartney, Ram.
I drifted away from the summer of 1983 as if the bed I slept in was floating across time and space. I could feel the pull of an incredible life tapping almost like Morse code in my brain, imparting what thought?
There was a girl, she met me at one of the turnstiles maybe after Ram had played 40 times or so. I don’t believe she ever said anything and if she did, she only said the words of the song Back Seat of My Car. Across the night sky and unattached to time, I could feel my life was so much more than it was earlier that day. It was an incredible encounter that defies definition. I just knew there was more.
As I slept, I was on the precipice of everything, so high up I could not see the ground. Time, clearly created for benefits I am not sure we will ever truly understand. On my small perch in which I slumbered, the world spun hard below me and there were wars, music, flashes of light, so many faces I did not yet know, and voices carried on in conversations I had not yet had. Entire possibilities were mere pinpoints of light as we were gliding across the stratosphere.
Somewhere, the girl left me. Her work was done. She somehow knew that although I seemed like someone who liked change, in reality, I let my knowledge stop in the places I felt comfortable. She would not allow this. I am grateful too, even though it seemed like an impossible mountain to climb.
As the years have gone by pieces of that night keep coming into view, and their significance gains with each recollection. I will never know who she was or if she was even real. But as I slept dangerously close to the edge that dropped off into the vastness of all of the decisions and their possibilities ahead of me, she kept me well. Every time I hear it, I remember:
“Oh oh, we believe that we can’t be wrong
Oh oh, we believe that we can’t be wrong
We can make it to Mexico City
Sitting in the back seat of my car, oh oh”
Songwriters: Paul Mccartney
The Back Seat Of My Car lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
at May 20, 2024