You know you’ve done it. You thought no one was watching and there was a pretty rockin’ tune blaring in your car going down the highway… so you start tapping the wheel. And then the beat begins to take over and your left foot starts to thump on the floorboard to the song. Soon, your right thigh becomes a snare drum and before you know it, you’re a highway Alex Van Halen. The song’s momentum begins to swell to an apex and only one thing will satisfy this moment in time… the graduation tassel that is hanging from your rear-view mirror! The cymbal crashes each time you hit the tassel and your car drum set is complete. You are rockin’ better than any air guitarist ever dreamed of!
Since I acquired a new vehicle a little over a year ago, my car drum set hasn’t been complete. The high school graduation tassel (YEAH CLASS OF 88!!!) that had hung in every vehicle I had driven since age 18 disintegrated with the last truck I owned. Between the torture of the summer sun beating through the windshield, as well as the regular percussion sessions over countless miles of highway driving, the poor thing just gave up the ghost. I’ve been lost since.
Oh sure… I’ve tried to play. The music is always good (and LOUD) in the car, and I haven’t lost the God-given rhythm I possess, but I am tassel-less. Without a cymbal, it’s just not the same. I thought that I would either have to hang it up as a highway drummer and just resort to belting out Michael Bolton songs OR finish my college degree program so I can graduate and get some more of that “hang-off-your-square-hat” cymbal goodness. Either choice left a scowl on my face.
And then I found it! I had a pretty cool chest of memory stuff from high school that had been up in the attic for years. Among the photo books, letterman jacket and plastic prom wine glasses I saw it in all its glory… an identical, mint-condition, 1988, red and gray graduation tassel that had never seen the light of day in twenty-plus years! Apparently I had ordered two tassels and put one away for whatever reason and now that decision was going to save my professional, traveling rhythmist career! Yes!
I’m forty this year and I’ve felt that I’m beginning the second half of my life. The half where you try to find significance rather than success. (Thank you R²!) But there are a few things from the first half that I’m carrying over, under my arm, until the day they plant me:
- The preference to be in blue jeans, a tee shirt, and tennis shoes.
- Loud rock-n-roll playing in whatever car I’m driving.
- The intense desire to re-grow my beautiful, blonde, 1980′s mullet. (Although it would be more white than anything now.)
- The solid fact that pizza is a direct blessing from heaven. No other food will ever touch it. Cheeseburgers come close, but will never win.
- My new (and yet old), symbolic cymbal/graduation tassel.
If you see my car swerving tomorrow, you’ll know why! Now if I can only get the guy who rides in with me to wail on his air guitar…
