Big American Drives: The Cure is Def Leppard

I lived in the American midwest for the first thirty-eight years of my life. When I lived there, on a break from work, I’d usually make the drive to Iowa where my father’s side of the family lived and still lives. After the toxic fallout from American Politics was over in our family, mostly, I remained close with (at best) five of my twenty plus first cousins, my double digits of uncles and abundance of aunts. After all was said and done and the growing up and out was completed, five relationships had survived the insanity that was part of being a politically engaged American in the past twenty years. Politics should never transcend Love or Truth, and yet I have seen American Politics do just that to you, me, and everyone we know. Truth? Love? What are these in the face of American Religion & Politics?

But I digress. I wanted to write about something far better than American Politics: American Drives. My father put the bug in me to do these big American Drives by taking our little family on Big American Drives in Big American Cars. Back when a guy like my dad could get a piece of the “dream,” we went on Big American Drives. Coast to fucking coast. With kids.

The drives from my Illinois or Wisconsin homes to my family in Iowa were a small American drive but — like most American drives over two hours — fairly dramatic. You had to pass through weird little cities and villages and narrow lanes and speed traps and through the rolling green valleys of Galena up across the staunch Mississippi River bridge through Dubuque and then further still . . . After I was old enough to drive, I made this drive, countless times until I changed my midwest home for a southwest home in my late thirties.

I took a lot of grief with me on my drive from Tucson to Ventura. Grief over my uncle, yes, but Grief so much bigger than that (lowercase) grief, too. Individuals get sick and die. Someday I will get sick and die. Someday you will, too. This, in reality, is not so special.

Death: Literally Anyone Can Do It, And Will Eventually — if only teaching good oral and written communication was quite as easy as death. Yes. I said it. Teaching ELA in America is sometimes harder than death. Because everything has changed. Everything. It’s not simply “school with masks.” Just take my word because I really don’t feel like elaborating during what’s left of my vacation.

The beach was remarkable. The ocean did not disappoint, nor did my friends. But as it always is on such long drives, the trip was all about The Drive. Every moment of clarity, of true peace, of honesty with myself came during The Drive. And Def Leppard.

Yes. Def Leppard. See, as I was driving back from California (the drive home is the worst because I always feel super Sad — capital S — when I leave), “Animal” randomly came up on a Spotify playlist and just as I was about to say “I can’t with this” and hit the Skip, I got to that great chorus that Teen Me loved so much, and I realized that I am still Teen Me and that’s totally okay. When she wasn’t drinking too much, worrying too much, and/or making spectacularly poor life decisions — she was an all right Teen girl. Quite funny and creative at times.

So I didn’t hit the Skip. I turned that shit up, and then I hit the Repeat. I listened to “Animal” until I had worked out all the feelings and memories it stirred in me: the good, the bad, the ugly. I worked out some feelings for the time being. e

Did Def Leppard cure me?
Depends on what you mean by “cure.”
The lyrics puzzle me still (I seriously want to/will teach a class in 80s Hair Metal Lyrics & Gender), but I think I did some serious ghost work on old versions of myself and coming to terms with parts of that “self” that I can embrace and parts of that self which are a frustrating trainwreck.

I smoked pot in California. Does that make me a bad Recovering Alcoholic? A bad Cancer Patient? A Less Sober Person? I don’t know, but did you even notice the penguin head? Thought not.

You don’t notice the penguin head. I don’t notice the penguin head. We’re so caught up in our Bullshit (capital B) that we can’t see all the fucking penguin heads that make life just as weird sober as it is when you’re stoned.

Because The Drive is weird. It’s like the drive from Chicago to Waterloo or from Tucson to Ventura. There is a lot of shit to see and explore. The longer you live the more people there are to see. (Sorry to my many friends in California — this trip was deliberately clandestine, as I was trying to make time for stillness near the ocean, and I got that in abundance.) The stranger you are, the stranger the drive is. This metaphor is lazy: it’s far too easy. “Life is a highway” — barf.

I think that’s all the Target Store Home Furnishings Department Wisdom I have to impart today, dear reader. California was the first time I’d left the state of Arizona in almost 2.5 years. I chuckled much of the way about the Lucille Bluth quote, “I’d rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona” because this has, at times, felt true for me.

In short, enjoy your drive, smoke the damn joint, listen to more Def Leppard.