on the way to work today
We had just dropped off my two younger children at the elementary school and we were on the way to my oldest son’s junior high. Suddenly, that song “Toxic” by Britney Spears came on the radio.
“That’s it,” I said, banging my hands lightly on the steering wheel. “That’s… it.”
I screeched my silver Nissan Altima to a swerving, spinning halt, right in the middle of the freeway. Cars honked and drivers yelled out their windows in protest as I opened the door and got out of my car.
“Baby, can’t you see… I’m falling…” sang the baby raspy voice. In black pants, black Friday-comfortable flats, and a surprisingly flattering, slightly fuzzy, pale mauve short-sleeved mock-neck sweater that I got for $7 at Wal-Mart, I slowly, deliberately climbed up onto my front bumper and hood to stand on the roof of my car. The other drivers, their own cars arranged pell-mell around mine, shook their heads and fists at me in puzzlement and consternation. Slowly, I stretched my arm in an arc, encompassing them all in its sweep with a long, smooth pivot of my hips. Drawn, their eyes locked on me, they all got out of their cars, one by one.
As the bandolero-esque guitar vamped into the first chorus, the music from my Altima swelled to encompass all the noise of the traffic and morning around us. Right as Britney sang, “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride,” everyone on the freeways began an abandoned, lanky-armed, defiant-footed dance, all in unison.
The only people on the roofs of their cars were me and some strategically distanced women in dresses made of shiny pastel spangles. Everyone else was in the lanes or on the hoods and trunks. All of us were dancing like girls in cages, but all in choreography-perfect synchronization. A traffic helicopter happened to be flying over at just that moment. If there had been a camera in the helicopter’s cockpit, it would have shown the pilot and copilot goggling at the scene in wonderment, scratching their heads in awe. Then another camera would show you details down below. A middle-aged man and wife break away from the rest and improvise a modified tango alongside their SUV, the outer component of her twinset twined around his neck. The flushed face of a secretary, her goldtone earrings bright, is thrown back. She closes her eyes in adoring worship of the beat.
Now there are several traffic and police helicopters swirling in the sky above. Their occupants torso-dance and pant into their headset microphones. The scene swivels down to my eleven-year-old son, Josh, who has assumed the role of an elegantly mod Pied Piper in his school uniform as he non-chalantly dances through the cars, leading a snake of feverish eleven-year-old girls in appropriately modest plaid skirts flailing in his wake.
Britney wails the part that she could never wail without digitalization and there’s one more flicker through the crowd at everyone – the corporate types, the receptionists, the house painters, the soccer moms, the helicopter pilots, the police officers, the go-go girls, and me – dancing, dancing, dancing with the retro sway and bass.
About four minutes have elapsed. The song ends. Everyone collapses onto their cars in a shuddering, joyful release.
Except me. I look down at my watch. Twelve minutes until eight. “Come on, Josh,” I say, and we get back into our car. The other people on the freeway shake the daze from their heads, some of them conscious of my Altima pulling away through the gap that has appeared in the crowd.
As usual, we got to school and to work on time.
We always listen to music in the car. It helps us relax and prepare for our long, busy days.
