The Price You Pay For Cool

Sitting at a red light yesterday on my way to work. Glance at the rear view mirror and see a young kid siting in a truck behind me. Hat on backwards, no shirt on, insolently smoking a cigarette, bobbing his head to the music that was cranked on his radio.
The first image I had was of fifty years from now when that kid has an enormous beer belly and the first symptoms of lung cancer. The price you pay for cool.
Then I thought about myself. Sitting there in silence because I hate classic rock radio, because my sound system sucks and because I am so wimpy when it comes to my beloved iPod.
Carol gave me a hookup that I can plug into my truck so I can listen to my iPod. TWO YEARS AGO. I have never used it.
I haven't used it because I won't leave the iPod in the truck when it is cold or hot for fear damage will occur, which leaves only three opportunities a year to do so. I won't bring it into work because I am afraid I will drop it or someone else will knock it off the shelf or I will forget it.
Methinks I worship this machine too much.
What made this scenario more meaningful, more bizarre, was that this kid was sitting in my truck. He was sitting in a Dodge Dakota pickup around the same year as mine and the exact same color as mine. For all intents and purposes it was the same truck.
I was looking at myself.
I worship music with a deep, abiding love. I worship warm weather with a deep, abiding love. When I was a kid, in the summer time, I cruised, baby, and I cruised with the radio blasting.
Yet here I was on a brilliantly sunny, reasonable warm day (it didn't rain until later), sitting in silence because of my neuroses and psychoses and generally snobby attitude towards inferior music systems. Mark Parenteau, on WBCN many years ago, had a taped bit that he played at 5:00 p.m. on weekdays announcing the lighting of the smoking lamp. In it he included a reference to morons, psychopaths and mental defectives. These are the people I identify with and now you know why.
The kid sitting behind me in my truck had it right.
I immediately switched on my radio and hit pay dirt. Aerosmith. I started rocking to the tune and the static. The next song sucked so I changed stations and got Phil Collins. Magnificent.
I rocked my way to work, feeling good, feeling like a kid, feeling like myself. Even with the static, even with the limited selection of songs. I was even so bold at the next red light to sing along with the song (I already forgot who it was) with my window down. Haven't done that in a long time.
Christ man, what the hell am I doing? I hate rules, and yet I create all kinds of rules for myself that limit my happiness, the unfettered expression of my soul.
Methinks sometimes I am the fool.
But I keep learning. My eyes are always open. Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." I am a firm believer in that philosophy. I am continuously examining my life (as if you didn't know this).
I am truly blessed today - I am taking The Peace Mobile to work. That means I have a CD player at my disposal.
I have been listening to Leonard Cohen pretty exclusively for a while. Today I need something with more balls.
Haven't decided who yet but it will rock and I will play it loud. With the window down and my head bobbing.
So if you pull up next to a long haired guy sitting in a VW bug, with plastic flowers on the dashboard and kitty stickers in the window, wearing a silly NHSLC work shirt, rocking out oblivious to the stares of others, you can laugh if you want to.
But that guy will have an aura about him that is a reflection of the truth. True essence, true spirit, a soul gloriously exposed. He will be a 58 year old teenager.
That, my friends, is a glorious state of being.