My eyes are about to pop out of my head as I stare down my mother in the car. I watch as she carefully removes a casette tape from the glove box, flips it around, and turns on the media player. " I just can't get you out of my head, boy your lovin' is all I'm thinking about" - she belts out the beginning of the chorus as she finally turns on the engine. 20 minutes of traffic, 1 cassette tape change, and 3 work calls later, I can finally see the edge of my school road in the distance.
School mornings were getting stressful and frankly embarrassing. Due to my mother's notorious tardiness I had missed every single class of Algebra in 9th grade. As we approached one of the very last red lights before my drop-off, I looked over to her. Mom was using this red light as an opportunity to put on her mascara, whilst frantically rummaging through her purse full of gum wrappers and old receipts for a lipstick. Suddenly the cars behind us began to honk, and before I could start shouting at her to move I realized the shock on her face - she had forgotten to fuel the car.
We sat in the car waiting for the police to come help us out. I didn't know where to start, this was so typical of her. As time passed, I made a mental note of all the classes I just missed: Algebra, English, Physics... and then finally, I exploded: "How could you be so carefree? How are you not stressing even a little bit when you're late? How can you live with your bag so unorganized? And most importantly, how do you forget to fuel your car?!"
It didn't take long after that for mom to sign me up for the school bus pickup/drop-off service.
I never really thought much about how mom felt until recently, when I was on my way back home from work. I tuned into Spotify's throwback classics, and there it was:
"I just can't get you out of my head
Boy, its more than I dare to think about"
It was only now that I realized I'm sitting here in my car with my handbag containing a dozen receipts, a half-eaten apple, a dirty tupperware, tangled headphones, and a toothpick sitting at the very bottom.
It was only now that I realized that I've been doing my makeup in the car every morning, timed perfectly to the stop lights of the Sheikh Zayed Road roundabout - just so I can sleep in an extra 15 minutes.
It was only now that I realized that life has been really fucking stressful lately, and Kylie Minogue might just be the only temporary relief right now. As I increase the volume, I realize I'm almost out of gas too.
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