Cars Should Go 'Vroom' --
Not 'Boom, Boom, Boom'
Well, call me a stick-in-the-mud, call me a fuddy-duddy, call me an old fogy, I don't care.
I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
Look at them. Driving smugly down the beachfront, oblivious to the blood pouring out of their own ears, inflicting the throbbing output of their Richter-scale subwoofers on all of Creation for a three-block radius -- churning up tidal waves, shattering windows, fissuring streets, stripping leaves off the trees, driving straws into telephone poles.
Ask them to turn it down, and if they still have enough auditory function left to hear you, they'll salute you with a finger and carp about their "rights" to listen to their music as loudly as they please.
But what about my "rights?" Don't I have a "right" to listen to a delicate Vivaldi violin sonata without the BOOMchunkaBOOMchunkaBOOMchunka--HUNH! from a Car That Goes Boom rattling my rolled-up windows from 'way over in the left-turn lane?
I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
Time was, the only vehicle that played music as it rolled through town was the Good Humor truck, his scratchy recording of "And The Band Played On" drawing near and then Dopplering off into the distance. It was a welcome part of a summer's afternoon.
But the Good Humor Man's gone; today, we've got The Cars That Go Boom. None of them seem to know "And The Band Played On."
They only know "BOOMchunkaBOOMchunkaBOOM."
Here comes one now, a grape-colored wagon with too-small and too-wide tires sticking 'way out past the fenders, and a hot-pink Mohawk stripe painted right down the middle. Its name is "Rockford Fosgate," or at least that's what the decal in the blacked-out rear window says.
BOOMchunkaBOOM, louder and louder, the Ice Cream Truck from Hell overtakes me from behind, then passes, the sound Dopplering off into the distance ...
I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
One of them has moved in right next door. It's also named "Rockford Fosgate."
(In fact, they all seem to be named "Rockford Fosgate." I don't know who you are, Rockford Fosgate, but I hope you and yours are sentenced at the Final Trump to spend eternity stuck in traffic with no air conditioning and that Enema-em kid blasting you at full military power from the next car.)
This Car That Goes Boom has a rather annoying habit of rolling up at 1 a.m. every night, right under my bedroom window, and BOOMchunkaBOOMing the whole neighborhood while he gets out, walks over to his garage door, raises it, walks back, gets in, and pulls into the garage. Sometimes, I think he just sits there for a minute or two, to make SURE all his neighbors get their money's worth of his little impromptu concert.
I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
I think of my sedate little red '94 Chevrolet in the garage, right next to the Car That Goes Boom, and I worry.
It's always been a good car, never given me any trouble, but it's always lived in fairly conservative company -- Oldsmobiles, Buicks, station wagons; the most radical influence on it previously was a rusty old Duster with oversized slicks on the rear and "Plymouth" painted in big letters down the side.
But under enough pressure, could an automobile succumb to a wrong influence?
Can a geriatric Chevy go bad?
I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
Will I go down to my car tomorrow and find it has suddenly donned blackout windows and neon license plate frames? Or those execrable blinding blue headlights? Will I find funny plastic square things adorning the windshield wipers? Will I stub my toe on a front bumper low enough to scrape the road kill off the freeway? Will it kick my foot off the brake when I slow down for the 45-to-35 speed limit change on Stewart Road, and go screaming through the junior high school speed zone at 70?
Will I turn Paul Harvey on the radio and instead get "BOOMchunkaBOOMchunkaBOOMchunka--HUNH!"?
Will my little Corsica change its name to Rockford Fosgate?
I hope not.
Because ...
... I do not like The Cars That Go Boom.
