Life in the Fast Lane was an Eagles song in 1976. It was about two people good in bed. That’s not what this post is about. It’s about my dog, Daisy, who can’t stand it when I pass a semi or large truck on Highway 101. If I do, she bolts upright and ends up on the console between the two front seats. The last thing I want when going 65 mph is a 20-pound bundle of nerves perched next to me on the console.
I have resorted to driving in the slow lane whenever possible. Sometimes I have to pass a slow vehicle, so I put my arm across the console in anticipation of a bolting dog. It’s bad enough when she gets off her tether tied to the head rest. One wrong move, and we would all be toast. It’s been six years, and I still worry about her causing an accident.
I got back from Monterey at 1:00, ate lunch, filled the fountains, read the mail, read two newspapers, let a woman come over to look at my teacups (she bought nothing), put away travel stuff. I was settling in to watch the news at 5:30 when I saw a text from my dance buddy.
Pick me up at the BART at 6:15.
Eek! It was 5:30 and I wasn’t dressed. Suddenly the news didn’t seem that important as I ran around getting changed, brushed my teeth, and got money out of my wallet and putting it into bar mode. Bar mode wallets contain very little cash or credit cards. There is all my health stuff, Triple A and my CVS and library cards.
As I was reaching the freeway, Dance Buddy called to say he just woke up and he’d’ be late and just meet me at the bar. Wise Girl knows its clientele and has bands from 7 to 10, not 10 to 1. We are the older crowd, the kind that still dances to rock and roll. We don’t want to start dancing at 10. We want to go home at 10 and catch the news and go to bed.
No news today. It’s so depressing, a huge mass shooting in Maine, the war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. So much senseless death and destruction. The hospitals in Gaza are shutting down due to lack of fuel, medicine, and hope. My Arabic-speaking daughter, whose professors were Palestinians, isn’t sleeping well with the destruction. She has been to Israel, as has her oldest sister. She has lived in Jordan, and vacationed in Lebanon and Istanbul. She is taking the war personally.
I got to the bar at 6:20, nabbed two bar stools and sat alone watching a basketball game on the big screen. How different is dancing in the fall and winter and spring compared to dancing outside all summer long? Now we have to expose ourselves to breathing other people’s exhalations, and COVID goes up. The original band had to cancel because they got COVID.
The replacement band is fabulous. It starts out slow with cha chas and fox trots. One of my interviewees from the book I wrote comes in and we chat. A woman comes over to see him, and the three of us chat about grandkids and the Golden Bachelor. She didn’t see last night’s episode, so we talk in general terms with no spoilers.
Dance Buddy shows up and we talk, then dance, talk, then dance. I accidentally break my water glass on the granite bar top. I leave a big tip, and we head out in our two separate cars. I listen to the Eagles CD from this morning’s drive home. I am listening to Life in the Fast Lane while traveling in the slow lane, this time not for Daisy, but because it’s nighttime, and my vision is worse at night. Lights are glary, and I don’t need to hurry.
In 1976 I never dreamed that I’d still be going to bars to dance. Some things never change.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 