Don’t tell me that you’ve never been caught singing wildly in your car.
We all have. Just admit it.
This blogpost is inspired by a sparked conversation last night on the way home from the noodle restaurant in Zion, after a pair of unlikely candidates discussed one of the most awkward moments known to man; right up there with that morning in church when you haven’t had anything to eat, and in the dead silence before the opening prayer is said, your stomach begins growling like a beached whale. I am talking about the two and one half second instance when you are caught singing in your car.
For full effect, download “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, and play, nay sing, at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. Even better if you are serenading your own desires in the front seat of whatever vehicle that you own.
The topic of awkward road singing came up near the end of the evening, well after I had lost what seemed to be an unending number of points in the girl next to me’s book, meanwhile the song “Coyotes” by Don Edwards was coming to an end on my playlist. Apparently some people don’t like it when a 78-year old man howls at the moon with a guitar in the background, who would have imagined that?
By the way, did I mention that she runs a home?
As we were pulling in the last stretch, I referenced how once, on a late night returning road trip, I belted out the words to the song “Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant, 58 consecutive times to keep my eyes from shutting and preventing a rollover southbound on I-15.
Swamp Thing: “Except of course whenever I passed someone. At that point I reached up to my right ear lobe, faked that there was a Bluetooth device dangling from my temple, and acted out that I was on some kind of wireless phone call with someone important.”
Cue involuntary spurts of laughter from the girl seated next to me.
Everyone loves to sing (and don’t you dare tell me that you’ve never faked a phone call like that in an attempt to not be caught singing in your car). Whether it has been in choirs, during showers, or at an awful Applebee’s karaoke night on Tuesday, we all have sang before. If we sounded decent, well that’s an entirely different discussion to bring up, but the point of the matter is that in our own heads, we think that we should be warming up to go on with the Three Tenors or Adele.
It is, however, a proven fact that 83% of the known population is horrendously off-key, true story.
The thing about singing in your car is that people watch you. Everyone does. And you must admit that if you get caught screaming the chorus to Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”, even for a split second by a 98-year old Hispanic midget, you still get that warming wave of shame all over, and begin biting a hole in your tongue in an attempt to convince them that you were not actually singing by yourself.
The chances of you actually meeting that person again? Slim to none. So what makes you care what they think? Is it going to come back and bite you in the butt at a later date?
Potential Employer: “Well, I really like our candidate, what does the rest of the committee think? Should we bring him on to the firm?”
Awkward Car Stranger: “You know, now that I think about it, I did see him attempting a piss-poor rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in a Dodge Caliber back in 2007, I don’t think that he’s the right fit for the job.”
As the night came to an end, I stalwartly defended my stance that there is nothing wrong with quietly skipping over the first few lines in the second verse of your favorite song so that the 8-month old infant sitting in the Nissan Altima next to you won’t actually witness you singing a song. Heaven forbid this sweet child catch you mid-chorus. After all, her perception of reality is limited to binkies, blankets, and crapping her pants.
Either way, I won’t be caught dead ever singing alone in my car.
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