Before I worked from home, I hated commuting. More
specifically, I hated the long slog home. It didn't matter if I was driving for
2 hours or fifteen minutes. The journey between my office and my apartment was
always a drudge.
Until, that is, a period of Tuesdays around 2003...when it
was magic.
My thirties had brought with them the realization that I was lonely. It was a feeling separate and distinct from the nagging depression that
had clung like a wet blanket around my shoulders since college. I was living
alone for the first time (not counting the cats, of course) and I really felt
like something...or rather some ONE was missing.
After a few unsuccessful office flirtations, I let my
friends convince me to start online dating. The early results were little
disasters in their own rights, but I hung in there...searching. I wanted love
and I was willing to put in the work and take some risks to find it.
It was about that time I that began carpooling on Tuesday
evenings...with Freddie Mercury.
It wasn't a regular thing at first. The local classic rock
station had "Two for Tuesdays" where they would play 2 songs in a row
by each band for the day. Queen had a regular slot and it seemed I could count
on them to come on around 5:30. The first time they played Somebody to Love, I
sang along. I've always loved that song and the way it makes the hairs on my
arms stand at attention. Freddie knew my pain.
Before long, it became a weekly ritual. I would make sure I
was in my car and on the road by 5:15. I never took note of the other song the
radio station chose by Queen for that week. I waited eagerly...some days desperately
for my song. It was always part of the set.
Inching through rush hour traffic, Freddie and I put forth our
petition. Can anybody find me somebody to
love?
It was a cry of hope. It was a prayer. It was sympathetic
magic. The rest of Queen were in the back seat singing backup in complete agreement
that I worked hard every day of my life and at the end of the day I took home my hard
earned pay all on my own.
By the time we got to that part... you know it...where the
song repeats again and again Find...Me.
Somebody to loooove. Find...Me. Somebody to loooove... every ounce of my
soul was behind the words. The widows of my car were tinted by the raw color of
my desire as Freddie and I called out to the very Gods for the one thing that
would make the daily grind worth grinding.
In the end, Freddie would hit that high note...and I'd reach
for it too!
And then it would be over.
The spell cast, the ritual over, I'd crack open the card
windows to let the cooling autumn air carry our wish out into the universe. And
then I'd start thinking about what to make for dinner.
In the cars around me, other drivers inched by, never knowing
the great act of sorcery that had taken place in the Taurus next to them.
This went on for a couple of months at least. That is, until
I was just about to give up on the whole online dating thing. That was when I
got an email without a picture. He was funny enough that I emailed back. His
picture, when he did send one, made me smile. He said he loved me on our first
date. 18 days later we were engaged.
I didn't wait for Two
for Tuesdays anymore. My commute home was shorter some days as my Wookie
and I bounced back and forth between his place and mine. It was a rare thing
for me to drive back to my place alone, but then one day I did. And Queen came
on. And I waited for the song knowing I'd already found my somebody. But the
song didn't come. Instead Freddie sang We
are the Champions and I thought, yes we are Freddie.
And I sang along.
