nah nah nah nah

(originally posted 9/16/2012)

So today I’m driving through the rain at noontime, always a melancholy experience in and of itself, listening to a self-made CD brimming with melancholy songs and singing along in my usual melodramatic (Aha! Thought I was going to say melancholy didn’t you?!) way and enjoying the hell out of it. So much so that even when I was caught car-singing by other motorists I carried on as if they weren’t pointing and laughing. The rain continued to come straight down as if it had nowhere else to go (Ok, that sentence was particularly bad… just trying to regain my bad-writing chops here) and after a time I needed to stop for gas… so stop I did. The rest of this is completely true.

Really.

I tend to exaggerate a lot, as well as lie even more, but this part is true. I got out to pump gas but left the car door open so I could continue listening to the song. That song being A Long December by Counting Crows, which becomes more important in only a few sentences. I chance upon a pump where the little thing that is supposed to catch the other little thing on the pump to allow you to stop squeezing the handle yet still have gas pumping into your tank actually worked. Usually it works for only long enough for you to decide that it works so you go off to the snack-mart to buy a chocolate Power Bar and a strawberry Crush, but then when you return the pump reads $0.09 and you still have to stand there like a douche bag and hold it.

First let me apologize to those people waiting to hear why the name of the Counting Crows songs was important. I really did think it was coming up in only a few sentences but I got off on a rant about the little things that are supposed to click onto other little things. My bad.

Second…. hmmm. I had a second. What was it? Damn. Anyway… the little thing that grabs the other thing to allow me to let go of the pump was working like a charm so it allowed me to wander back to the door and listen to the song. Then it happened! I had a ‘feels like I’m in a movie’ moment. I was singing away as if I was in the ending of some moving romantic comedy and this was the scene where everyone completely empathized with me.

All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

Walking lazily into the rain I closed my eyes, looked up and sang the “nah nah nah nah… nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah…. nah nah nah nah yeah…” part (see, I told you the song would be important. If you don’t know the song you are completely missing how powerful this scene is. Dick.). I wanted to spread my arms and slowly spin but I was aware that I was being watched by many people at the gas station, some who were not big fans of the type of romantic comedy whose ending I was now living out, so I didn’t go that far. It was awesome. My only regret was that I didn’t spread my arms out and slowly turn around. My advice to anyone who finds themselves in that spot in the future is this: fuck who’s watching and end your movie the way you want to. And another thing… it’s perfectly normal to see faces in clouds and wallpaper and bathroom tiles. Can I help it if I see faces in everything?! But I digress… back to the gas station. Almost on cue I looked back at the pump as the song finally wound down to see $0.23.

I don’t regret a thing… even as I sit here with the first signs of hypothermia setting in (who would have thought that rain could be so chilly) and my shoes still soggy. “nah nah nah nah… nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah…. nah nah nah nah yeah…” indeed.

The faces in the nearby trees loved me in that one.