One fundamental way I’m different from my husband on roadtrips is that I enjoy listening to the radio and he most emphatically does not. I guess, more specifically, I mess around with the radio constantly, searching from song to song. I know, I know, it sounds annoying. But first off, I can hardly stand to sit still in the car. And secondly, playing the radio is the only way to achieve any degree of surprise and spontaneity in one’s music consumption (again, helping with the boredom factor).
Anyway, on my last trip I was the only adult in the car, and my kids are happy with music as long as it’s loud – so I was torturing myself with the local buttrock & country stations as I drove through Grays Harbor on to home. After a few gruelling efforts that almost got the best of me (I thought I could outlast the extended version of Foghat’s “Slow Ride”. I was wrong.) I finally heard the strains of this song, which I suddenly realized fits into my musical category of “stalker / serial killer lyrics” (The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and Grass Roots’ “Temptation Eyes” also come to mind):
I’ll take my chances babe I’ll risk it all
I’ll win your love or I’ll take the fall
I’ve made my mind up girl it’s meant to be
Someday lady you’ll accomp’ny me
It’s written down some where, it’s got to be
You’re high above me flyin’ wild and free
Oh but someday lady you’ll accomp’ny me
I especially love the part where he tells his lady she’s “high above [him]”. Yeah, that pedestaled goddess verbage is just right before he gets that look in his eye and starts in with the unreasonable demands, the fantasies about the two of you “running away from it all”, even while he fingers the loaded gun in his front pocket…
Hope you’ve got mace in your purse, honey.