Americans have a hunger they can never quite satisfy: a hunger for the road.
Perhaps it is our history as a nation of people transplanted and transported from other lands. Or, maybe it’s the nature of living in a vast, open land mass with freedom to move over it at will. It could be related to a need for speed – stemming from our human ancestry as slow, easy prey, where speed could save your life! But, I think we drive because it’s fun.
Why else would kids so quickly gravitate toward cars large and small, vrooming them around the kitchen floor, chirping the tires and tearing up linoleum roadways virtually from birth? This early sense of the joy behind the wheel, imaginary at that age at best, connects to a teenage need for freedom as we become young drivers in reality. Teens drive when they can because they can, even when they have no where in particular to go other than “away” – from parents, home, school, or anything the binds them to one spot for longer than ten minutes. Over time, our practical concerns mitigate the fun and we as adults need to get to specific places at specific times to do specific things that we can’t even remember right after we did them. Parents become taxis – servants to the wheel as they transfer kid cargo to school, sports, events, ice cream, etc. That can really suck the fun out of driving.
Still, even as fragmented and harried as daily driving can be, there are still moments when your favorite song comes on the radio, the breeze blows your hair back and you belt out time-worn lyrics mashing the gas harder to go faster, faster, heart-racing, losing yourself to the linoleum dreams and becoming the car, skimming the road in pure, crazy joy. It may only last until you get to the grocery store, but the fun of driving is still there. You knew it all along. You just needed a moment to find it.
Perhaps it is our history as a nation of people transplanted and transported from other lands. Or, maybe it’s the nature of living in a vast, open land mass with freedom to move over it at will. It could be related to a need for speed – stemming from our human ancestry as slow, easy prey, where speed could save your life! But, I think we drive because it’s fun.
Why else would kids so quickly gravitate toward cars large and small, vrooming them around the kitchen floor, chirping the tires and tearing up linoleum roadways virtually from birth? This early sense of the joy behind the wheel, imaginary at that age at best, connects to a teenage need for freedom as we become young drivers in reality. Teens drive when they can because they can, even when they have no where in particular to go other than “away” – from parents, home, school, or anything the binds them to one spot for longer than ten minutes. Over time, our practical concerns mitigate the fun and we as adults need to get to specific places at specific times to do specific things that we can’t even remember right after we did them. Parents become taxis – servants to the wheel as they transfer kid cargo to school, sports, events, ice cream, etc. That can really suck the fun out of driving.
Still, even as fragmented and harried as daily driving can be, there are still moments when your favorite song comes on the radio, the breeze blows your hair back and you belt out time-worn lyrics mashing the gas harder to go faster, faster, heart-racing, losing yourself to the linoleum dreams and becoming the car, skimming the road in pure, crazy joy. It may only last until you get to the grocery store, but the fun of driving is still there. You knew it all along. You just needed a moment to find it.
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