When she was little, my daughter used to say, “It makes my heart hurt.” My young son would agree.
She was talking about the low deafening “boom-boom-boom” emanating from teenagers’ cars as they drove past with their stereos turned up as loud as they would go and the bass thundering full blast. The ground would shake and windows would rattle. And something inside our bodies would tremble and feel almost like a heart attack coming on.
The teens, however, would be leaning way back in their seats, soaking up this awful racket, hoping of course, that someone else their age would notice them passing by and think they were cool.
It got to be a family joke. Every time we’d hear the bass sound of a teenager’s car approaching, we’d clutch our chests and cry, “It hurts my heart!”
My young children promised they’d never do that to other people when they got older.
Well………….. fast-forward several years. My son just got his first truck. He is eating his words and I am clutching my chest.
He just spent half the money he made working all summer on an “awesome” system for his truck. (Teens don’t stay “stereo system”; they say “system”.) After he had it installed, he sat in his truck, cranked up that bass, and my house shook. And yes, my heart skipped a few beats, too.
When he came in, I asked, “Do you remember when you were little and didn’t like it when cars drove by with their music really loud?”
He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I can’t believe I used to not think it was cool. This is SO cool.”
“Doesn’t it make your ‘heart hurt’?” I teased him.
“Ha. Ha,” was his only response.
A few days later I had the pleasure of riding with him on a trip that took over two hours. He restrained himself for the longest time … we listened to soft songs without much bass.
Finally, he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Don’t you want to hear my system?!” he exclaimed.
“I thought we WERE listening to your system,” I teased.
“But don’t you want to at least hear how awesome it can sound?” he queried.
“Oh, all right,” I capitulated, knowing that even if I hadn’t, he would have shown me anyway. I braced myself for the onslaught.
First, he tuned into a radio station that, well, isn’t exactly one of the speed buttons on my car radio. Next, he fiddled with all sorts of buttons.
And then it hit. The car was shaking, my feet were tingling, my eyes were watering, and I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom pretty badly. I couldn’t hear myself think, I couldn’t understand the words to the song, and I was even having a hard time remembering what my name was or what day of the week it was.
And my heart hurt.
I turned to my son with panic written all over my face. He turned down the music for a moment and said, “Awesome, right?”
Yeah, right. Only if you think heart attacks are fun.
