The DR

Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Location:  My Car - Oak Park, Chicago, River Grove -
Task #8

I know the list said to drive the DR one "official last time". But I think it's pretty safe to say that this wasn't the end.

Lauren made a good point. The DR wasn't really about where we went, which streets slowed us to a crawl. It was more about the freedom.

Not just the freedom of a teenager behind the wheel ( although that was part of it) but also the kind of freedom that you can only feel when you're with a person that gets what you mean without you having to say a word, a person that you can spaz and flip in front of and you know she's spazing and flipping right there with you. It's about a freedom in knowing your whole bright future lay out before you all you had to do was dream it up right there in the car, an unencumbered momentary hold on reality.   

 

It was about a freedom to be nuts, be goofy, and awkward, to learn new things, try new things, talk, and be ourselves. And it was funny how easy it was to slip back into our 18 year old selves and feel that way again. 

We may have forgotten a few of the streets, or nearly climbed into someone else's  car, and felt so uncomfortably full from the mountainous cheese on our stuffed pizza, but the effect was the same. We laughed and reminisced, and had another "close call" in an alley, same alley actually.

One thing that struck me as funny was the music. I spent time creating a play list of all the songs we loved, were obsessed with learning the words to, and had meaning. We gathered nearly all of them. The funny part was that we barely listened to any of them. Of course we belted out "Nothing to Lose"( a couple of times), flailing about in the car as we went, and we found that it only took one play to remember all the tongue twisty words.But for the most part we were too busy talking. Some of those stories I hadn't heard in years. And each story reminded us of another way-back-when moment. 

But it wasn't just about "back then", it was taking time out of our busy lives, shutting out the rest of the world, to be us again.