A Musical Journey

It was Wednesday afternoon and the last bell of the school day had just gone off. It was pouring outside and I had forgotten to wear a rain jacket to school that day, so inevitably I was going to get soaked walking to my car, but I didn’t care. As I walked to my car, I could feel the stress of school being washed away as I slowly got drenched with cold rain drops. When I finally got to my car, I threw my backpack in the passenger seat and jumped into the driver's seat. I started the engine and turned up the heat in order to warm my shivering body that had become covered in water droplets. Then came my favorite part of the day, I turned on my music and felt the wave of happiness wash over me that comes with knowing that I had just finished another day of school.

My favorite part of the day is the drive home from school because it’s time I have to myself. If I want to sit quietly and reflect on my day or think about obscure things that pop into my mind, I can do that. If I want to turn up the sound of my music and let off some steam by singing the words to my favorite song, I can do that, but no matter what mood I’m in after a long day of school, listening to my music while driving never fails to make my day better. The type of music I listen to on my drive home depends upon a few variables, including the weather and what day of the week it is. I have three go-to playlists for my drives to and from school, each playlist representing a different mood. I have an upbeat playlist that I like to play on sunny days, a playlist specifically for Fridays when I'm in the best mood, and a mellow playlist for days when I just want to relax after a long day of school. On that rainy Wednesday I turned on my relaxing playlist and let the soothing lyrics of Alex Turner's "It's Hard to Get Around the Wind" flow out of the speakers and fill my car as I pulled out of the puddle-filled parking lot.

The great thing about music is that it can transport you to another time and place by triggering a memory attached to a certain song. As I was driving home Wednesday and listening to "It's Hard to Get Around the Wind", I was instantly reminded of my brother Sam. The first time I heard that song was a movie called Submarine, which Sam and I watched together last summer before he left for college. So when this song came on, I couldn’t help but think of Sam and wonder how his day was going in Champaign. The song also made me miss last year when Sam was a senior and I was a freshman, and we would drive home from school together. As much as enjoy having time to myself on my drive home, I still occasionally miss the days when I would get in the passenger's seat and Sam and I would exchange stories about our day as we drove home. While I drove, the memories of my time with Sam before he left for college filtered through my head as rain drops bounced off my windshield.

The next song that came on during my drive home on that rainy Wednesday was “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson. I used to take tap dance lessons and for one of our end-of-the-year recitals my tap teacher picked the song “Banana Pancakes” for our tap dance routine. When that song came on in my car I instinctively started tapping my foot and singing the lyrics which I had memorized from the amount of times my tap teacher had played it while we practiced our routine. Listening to the song, I was instantly transported into my tap dance class as I practiced the choreography for our routine with my friends. Flashes off my old tap lessons flipped through my head as I drove and sang along with the song.

The last song that played on my drive home was “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel. When I was little, my family had a big red van. When we went on long road trips we would take the middle seat out of the van so my brother and I had a vast amount of space in the back seat and we could play with toys or bundle up in a sleeping bag and lay down on the floor if we wanted. I remember laying down on the floor in the back of our red van during a long road trip and drifting in and out of sleep while my parents sat in the front singing along with their favorite songs. One song that my parents sang while I was snuggled up in the back seat that stuck in my head was "The Boxer". As "The Boxer" played in my car on my drive home that Wednesday, I imagined my parents singing me to sleep which made me long for the days when I was little and carefree. I was nearing my house, which meant that my journey home was almost over and I wouldn't be able to listen to another song. I finally pulled into my driveway and put my car in park as I listened to the rhythmic beat of the steady raindrops, but I didn't turn off the engine right away. I wanted to savor the last few minutes of that rainy drive home. I love listening to my playlists while I'm driving because they're almost like scrapbooks, where instead of photos, they contain songs that hold special memories in my life. Even though the drive home from high school is only about ten minutes, it had felt like a had been on a long journey because I had experienced so many different emotions and memories just by listening to three different songs. Once the final notes of "The Boxer" faded out, I turned off my car, took the key out of the ignition, and ended my journey home with the slam of my car door.