5:46 a.m. - 2007-10-22
On the Dark Side
Have you ever wondered about the small coincidences in every day life and how they effect the course of your life? Me neither. Okay, I did for a milisecond today when, as I was returning from Taco Bell, I stopped at a quarter mile light on the main road that runs parallel to my street. Rather I stopped myself I should say, since it is usually my practice to run these lights if nobody's looking. An aside: in a complex little driving equation that I seem to innately know (and which if heeded will save many wasted manhours and a ton of fossil fuels) if you drive just below the speed limit on a given road you miss not only the main lights turning red, but also the annoying little secondary lights as well. In theory. I've never tested it myself because I subscribe to the obverse of this theory which states that if you go a little "above" the speed limit you will have the same result. It's true, usually. Tonight as I was pondering gassing it through the last crimson lamp standing between me and home (and a steaming plate of nachos) I chose to do the unexpected. I stopped at the light. At the same time I was listening to Huey Lewis sing "If This is It" on the oldies station (too short a trip to set up the satellite, but that's another post) and even though 20 years is not enough time to place between me an that excerable song something told me to leave the station on. All right it was mostly laziness. But this one time my apathy was rewarded when I heard the unmistakable piano intro to "On the Dark Side" from the movie Eddie and the Cruisers blasting from my 3 remaining working speakers. I hadn't heard this song in ages* so I was content to sit there for the customary 30 seconds of the light lost in reverie. As the light went green I motored the last half mile to my house content in the knowledge that since this particular song followed the perfect template of it's 1960s pop music forebears, it would just be ending as I pulled up to the driveway. And it did. And for one brief moment I was looking on the bright side of stopping for something for the first time in a long time. Because of "On the Dark Side". How cool.
*Now that I think about it, I did see John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band performing it on this year's Jerry Lewis' Labor Day Telethon, but it makes for a better story. Besides it was a pale imitation of the studio version. I know, I know the band themselves were already a pale imitation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,0)
