Surprise Car Karaoke

Hey there.

I remember this one time back in college I caught this store clerk talking to herself.

She was restocking cereal at this grocery store on campus and thought no one was in earshot, and she was going back and forth about how she was going to argue with her boss that she deserved the weekend off. I won’t say that I remember her arguments for it or what she anticipated as the rebuttal, but I remember standing there, on the other side of the pallet, for an extra moment or so, out of sheer curiosity. Then at some point, either I coughed or she glanced up and startled back, and I had to apologize and assure her that I wasn’t a creep, which sounds like something a creep would say. So we both started laughing at the other and at ourselves at the same time.

But then she asked me, quite honestly, “Do you ever catch yourself talking to...yourself?” As if it was this foreign thing that I could never relate to. I came clean with her though.

“I’ve had complete arguments with myself. Which are always awful, because you know everything the other guy’s gonna say and you STILL never win!”

She thought that was funny. Or she realized I had outcrazied her and laughed so that I’d leave her alone. Either way.

Do you ever get caught being yourself?

I don’t mean the professional, at-work version,  and I don’t mean the properly groomed and date-night appropriate one either. I don’t even mean the drunken, louder than necessary, shameless and arrogant how long you can ride this bicycle on the freeway without getting arrested version. Or maybe I do mean that one, if that’s the version of you that feels most natural when no one else is around. Hopefully it’s not quite so chaotic or detrimental to your health and legal problems. But even if it is. Does anyone ever get caught in one of those moments, where you’re sure no one’s watching, and someone definitely is? And there’s no point explaining, because it’s painfully obvious what you’re doing, but you have to fight back the urge to explain anyway?

I ask because I had one of those moments just today. Don’t worry, it was perfectly legal.

I have recently taken on a new job. I started working for the State of Wisconsin’s Employee Trust Funds. Woot woot, by the way. It’s going well thus far, but one annoying thing about it is that the first check comes in the mail before direct deposit kicks in from here on out. No big deal, I can just drive over and deposit it myself. So after work, I hop in the car and take the 5ish minute drive to the bank.

One thing about me, I love driving in the car alone. It means I get to blast music and sing/rap/harmonize/head bang to my heart’s content and no one gets to judge me for it. I could be in the car for literally 30 seconds and I usually am trying to find a tune that fits the mood of the task I’m setting out to accomplish. It turns out, by the way, that grocery shopping goes very well with materialistic 90’s hip hop. Because Money Ain’t a Thang. Because I’m the #1 Stunnah. Because Cash Rules Everything Around Me, CREAM, get the money, dollar dollar bill y’all.

Anyway, it’s still COVID going on, so I decide to use the drive-up deposit, and it’s the second or third time in my life that I’ve done so. Apparently, right now, they aren’t requiring deposit slips at my bank, so you just give them the check and your ID and they sort it out for you. I even clarify this by pressing a button to get the teller’s help. He comes up on this screen next to the console, we chat for a moment, and the confirms what I need to do, so cool. I get the capsule, put in my check and my ID, send it off, and wait a few minutes.

And while waiting, I do in fact turn the music back on and resume jamming out and doing way too much harmonizing to a song I don’t even know all the correct lyrics to. And I’m doing this for a minute or so, and I happen to look over and see the teller again, who at this point is laughing at me. I don’t know if he’s been sitting there for five seconds or the full minute. After pausing the music and apologizing, I confirm that he should make the deposit into my joint checking account and thank him for his time. He stops giggling at me long enough to tell me to have a nice day.

Now, I could have been embarrassed by that incidence of surprise car karaoke. I could have turned the music off and rode home in silence. Or I could have done what I did, which was blast the rest of that song and the next one with the windows down, imploring pedestrians and other cars to join in.

Unsuccessfully, I might add. Turns out, life is not a Nissan commercial.

All I want to say here is that, hopefully, you have a chance a few times a day to let out the more restrained parts of yourself. And it might not be some outgoing, random thing like mine was, but hopefully it is cathartic, and it is doable and safe (and legal). I mean, it’s not easy to feel like your normal self all the time anymore. So just do it anyway, especially if you’re in a mask while you’re caught in the act.

Later.