It’s a crisp Saturday night in the Fall of ‘97. The windows are down, the wind whips through my hair, and the music blares. The bass is way up, the treble is way low, the music plays almost as loud as the speakers can go, and we sing even louder.
We cruise through the streets of our smallish town. There’s a loop we follow every week. We drive down to the light at the Wendy’s drive-thru and take a left into the Roses parking lot. We stop for a bit, leave our cars on—with the music blaring of course—as we get out to see our friends. We talk about the things that we, at the tender ages of sixteen and seventeen, think are so important.
Who is Joe taking to Military Ball?
Why wasn’t Suzy in class yesterday? Did you know Matt dumped her AT THE FOOTBALL game?!
Dude! Charlie got a new truck! Have you seen him out here tonight? It’s suh-weeeet!
He wraps his arms around me. “Hey there Smalfry. It’s good to see you out here tonight. Been wonderin’ if you’d show up!” I blush and turn around to give him a hug. It feels so natural to show such affection out here, free from the judgment that so often shows up in the hallways at school.
We comment on the cars as we watch them drive by. It was on these weekend nights that I first fell in love with cars. I never drove. My friends had much better cars than I had, and it was much more fun to be the passenger. The gold 1988 Nissan Maxima was my favorite. It had dark tinted windows that made us feel so cool inside, like we were rockstars driving through a crowd of adoring fans. And then there was the teal Chevrolet Beretta - not a light teal color that feels so muted, but a bold, bright teal that makes you stop in your tracks the minute you see it and makes you want to paint your teenage room that very color, right this very instant. To this day, I can’t help but stop in my tracks when I see a car painted a bold, bright color or with dark tinted windows.
After a few minutes of chatter, we say our goodbyes and get back in the car to continue our cruising parade. We take a right out of the parking lot, and head back up to the town square. When we get to the light by the big baptist church, we turn right and drive down the quiet residential road beside Chick-Fil-A. It’s too bad Chick-Fil-A is closed at this time of night, because we could all really go for a big tub of waffle fries. We turn left to go around the median and find ourselves at the light where we started. We sit in the turn lane and crank the music just a bit louder. The bass in this one is just SOOO good!
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Those town streets were home to me in those teenage years. We had no parties to attend, we had nowhere to go, and for some reason, those streets felt like they were standing there just waiting for us to come hang out. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the “No Loitering” signs. I suppose some businesses hung them up to keep kids like us out. But when you’re a teen, you feel invincible—the world is your oyster—and you are more daring than ever before.
If I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I can conjure those streets—that cruising route—in my mind as if it happened only yesterday. I can hear the playlist loud and clear. I still know every single word to all the songs. I am so different now, some 25 years later, but deep down, so much of that young girl still remains.
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Some might say I grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks.” My family never had a lot of money, and I often felt jealous of my schoolmates that seemed to have more than I did. Many of the people I went to high school with attended Junior League and Cotillion—things I had never heard of. I grew up wishing I could be like them, with their perfect two-parent families, their huge, beautiful houses, and their lives that seemed like everything came so easy to them.
I went to daycare, elementary, and middle schools that were filled with predominately low-income students—many of whom were black. Many of my best memories from childhood include these black friends. My Mom and Aunt taught me that people were people, no matter their skin color. I believed it. I embraced it. I thought that I lived it. But I was wrong.
Now as I think back on those days where I thought black and white were living in harmony, I realize just how blind I was to the realities that my black friends were facing. I never once saw myself as having a privileged childhood, but now I see that although it was full of challenges, I never had to experience the things my black friends did. As a white teenager, I never even thought to ask them how their lives were different than mine.
When I listen to these songs now, they take me right back to those small town streets. I am back in that high school band room full of amazing musicians, many of whom were black. I am back in the stands of the high school football field, where the people I had the most fun with were of a different skin color than my own. And yet as many memories as I have with the black folks around me, I spent the weekends cruisin’ on the streets, with my white friends. Blaring music created by black musicians, singing words that portrayed a reality I could remain blind to, simply because I was white.
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Now 25 years later, these songs feel no less relevant today than they were then. And while listening to this old playlist brings me so much joy and nostalgia for my high school days, it also completely tears me apart. It feels so unfair that the lyrics to Gangsta’s Paradise are still the reality for so many. I am ashamed that I even dared to think a song like Tha Crossroads was a song that I could identify with. It makes me so angry I could spit that a mass of white people were so arrogant to think they can storm the capital building with confederate flags waving high and not be immediately thrown into a police wagon and taken to jail.
I moved away from that town long ago, but the memories remain. I’m connected to many of those black childhood friends through social media, and I’m challenged by their posts, almost every single day. I know that my kids now live the enchanted, privileged childhood that I once longed for; and it breaks my heart into pieces that their children don’t. They can’t. Not as long as our society remains blind to the inherent racism that exists.
I know if I were to drive down those streets once again, I would feel the same impulse to crank my bass, turn down the treble, and completely rock it out. But I also know that this time I’d be more aware of what’s going on around me.
Earlier this week, I wept as I heard the words of Rev. Silvester Beaman at the Inaugural Benediction,
We will seek out sin and seek forgiveness, thus grasping reconciliation.
As I look back on those teenage years of blindness, I confess my sin and seek forgiveness. I vow to move forward with eyes wide open. With a heart wide open. With ears wide open. And with arms ready to do the work of true reconciliation.
For the full Cruisin’ experience and a true ride down Memory Lane, I present to you the playlist that inspired this post. I promise it will help you get through the weekend. Just promise me you’ll get up and do the dances when the time comes, m’kay?
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Playlist".