Four Oldies on the Way to Town

It's kind of a quiet week around here.  Louisa and Elsie are in Florida for our church body's National Youth Convention.  Matt's at Boot camp, of course.  And Joe was gone overnight with the three littles to look at a van in southern Minnesota. 

But we had Jeremy here to visit for a couple of days, so that was fun.  He brought all his new games and movies to share with the other kids.  It's his sweet big brother thing.

Today the three middles and I took Jeremy back to Thief River.  He had to work at 4:00.  Jeremy, although having attained the ripe old age of 20,  doesn't drive.  He's got his permit.  But he hasn't really lived at home or had a "normal" enough schedule to get much practice time. 

(I might add here that although Jeremy is a pretty good driver, the last time I drove with him, over a year ago, he was in kind of a Dukes of Hazzard stage.  After sliding around a few corners, I told him I was done.  If he wanted to learn to drive, he had to get his dad to go with him.)

He drove to town today.  The other kids asked why I was letting him drive.  I asked him if he felt mature and in control enough to drive safely.  He assured me this was the case. 

I immediately felt sleepy when we got in the car.  I was hesitant to give into it, with Jeremy's record and all.  But man!  it just hit me like a wall.  I couldn't stay awake for anything.

Jeremy had the Classic Rock station going strong.  After one more exhortation for self-control and not clowning around, and a warning that he was on zero tolerance, I dozed off a little bit, listening to the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, and all the rest.

At one point, Shake it up, Baby came on.  Jeremy clowned just a bit, by wiggling the wheel for the chorus.

I opened my eyes enough to cut him a dirty look out the side of my slitted eyes, and he settled down. 

Then John piped up from the back seat with an altered version of the Beach Boys, "And he'll have fun, fun, fun, til our daddy takes the T-bird away."

Totally cracked me up.

But didn't wake me up. 

I managed to wake up enough when we neared town to navigate Jeremy around the construction south of Hugos.  And it was just in time for one of our all time favorite family songs, Bohemian Rhapsody.  We were all singing it out loudly, Jeremy at 20, Clara at 13, Sophie at 11, and John at 9.  And me.  And we were doing all kinds of harmony.  It was really, really fun. 

"Galileo, Galileo, Galileo Figaro.  Magnifico-o-o-o!"

"He's just a poor boy from a poor family,  Spare him his life from this monstrosity."

"Bismillah!  No! we will not let you go!"

"So you think you can stone me and spit in my e-e-eye?   So you think you can love me and leave me to di-i-ie?"

I love that my kids and I have this shared cultural literacy.  That something as simple as a song on the radio can elicit this joint vocal response from my kids of such a wide range of ages. 

On the way home, I took my new favorite back-road cut-off.  Nothing but fields and gravel.  Just the right spot to turn up the music loudly and belt out another Queen favorite when it came on.

"Weeeeeeee are the champions, my frie-ends, aaa-aaah.  And we'll keep on fighting, till the end."