I was saying my rosary on the way to work, and I pulled up to one of those lights that have a four minute red when you hit them just wrong. I continued with my piousness, settling in and connecting with my spiritual side. Quiet. Peaceful. Calm. Sober. There were two lanes, and a huge SUV pulled up beside me, actually shaking from the volume of music coming out of its subwoofers…
And it was Tech-N9ne doing “Bout ta Bubble,” a tune with lyrics like:
Tech’s in the place, everybody get mainy
Punks betta’ cuff yo lady, can’t nobody tame me
Blame me for keepin’ her runny eyed rainy
Ladies used to hate me, now they comin’ out they panties
This was at 7 AM. Where does this guy work? You may wonder how I even know who Tech-N9ne is – Jon Jon and Charlie used to listen to him in The Bahamas – but you get the picture… It was a perfect study in contrasts: a gentile woman of a certain age in an Audi coupe, praying next to some dude slapping his steering wheel with a wall of attitude pounding out “they” windows. I continued to say my rosary for a minute, until the irony hit me and I started laughing. I am sure God understood, a saint would be challenged by that level of distraction.
So I just sat and laughed. And for a couple of minutes I was transported back to holidays in The Bahamas and being drunk. Music is a powerful trigger to emotion, and to say my attempt at preparing myself for the day was blown, would be an understatement. I didn’t feel like turning on the rap station and heading for the nearest ABC Liquors, but I did smell the suntan lotion and feel the thump, thump, thump of the hull on a briny sea and remember what it was like to be catastrophically carefree, and thick as a brick…
